And They Begged For Real

On summer mornings, we didn’t speak.
You lit a cigarette. One of us brewed
a pot of coffee. You’d say,
You’re going to have to keep
those shoulders back
and stand straight if you want attention—
Maybe this is why I never smoked.

Just children at the kitchen table, watching
you paint your nails a new shade of Avon red.
We listened to your stories of Panama—
roaches the size of saucers, our eyes darting
between the face above the sink
and your lips. You’d talk for hours
about sliced radishes and tongue,
rats behind alley trash cans, how streetlights
went dark at nine for curfew.

Sometimes, I thought you made it up—
some child escaping through a window.
His father running into the street, a belt wrapped
around his fist. The blonde son with blue eyes
your mother loved more
than she loved you. The night she
called you little bitch for coming home late.
How you begged her not to send you away.
How you heard bedroom noises
when you cleaned the neighbor’s house.
And when anger spilled over, like coffee
from the pot, the back of your hand flashing
through the air, we begged, too. We begged
for an end to tornados. We waited for the dark
to bring fireflies. For the rum and coke naps
in the afternoon. We listened in our beds
for roaches on the floor, footsteps
on the stairs, fingernails on the doorframe.