Junkyard

The back bumper of my car popped

off easily, the rusted remains barely holding on.

The tow-truck driver tore off

the end of my Nissan like stripping

an aged bandaid from a wound. It dangled

for a moment, a hangnail of metal,

before the driver threaded the long scrap

into the car through the back seat and into

the front, between the headrests, the eye

of a needle. My denim-blue car was shackled

to the back of the tow-truck like the forty-five years

my uncle lived, shackled to his thoughts,

the alcohol, his hot-metal sadness,

until he swallowed those pills and I drove

his car for the five years that followed. Perhaps

watching the frame break, restrained by chains

and hauled away wouldn’t have felt like the tearing

of a thousand bandaids or the stick of a needle-prick

for every fiber if there weren’t still pieces

of him in the cigarette-burned seats,

the coffee-stained floor, the faded numbers

on the buttons where his fingers once pressed.

Reflections

Grandma’s temper shook like galvanized wire,

and her voice thundered through my ears

when she yelled, quick to snap anyone who tripped

in her trap. It was late morning when my mother and I

visited–I was six–and I slunk behind a curtain to peer

from the window at the lilies waking from winter. I turned

to walk away but stumbled over an cord, tearing it

from the wall, the tabletop lamp shattering into kaleidoscopes

on the floor. I cried as Grandma spun from her chair like a top,

then marched into the shade of the lampless room, trampling

in the fractured space between us. I expected to hear my mother burst

like blisters, but Grandma got there first, and my mother embraced me

instead. I saw, for the first time, where my mother came from,

then began to understand who I was still to become.

Fallen

To enfold our bodies, the pressure warm, my chest

beating in tandem with hers, would have been

beautiful. She would have fit in my embrace like a blanket

wrapped around us and we would have stayed faithful

to each other if we were allowed to love, but the walls

of our Catholic school saw only disgrace

and degeneracy. Each blood-stained crucifix, nailed

to every doorway and hallway, spied on me, on her.

It was a building of bricks like any other,

but the Diocese called it catholic, made it holy

and hallowed, wrapped in pages from the Bible, garnished

with the Eucharist, bathed in hetero-love and the love

of God, where I thought we didn’t belong and never would.

The Unique and United Society welcomed me, a support group

whose name sounded like unity but began with the un of unnatural,

its title chosen in place of Gay Straight Alliance: forbidden

fruit in this school, this church. There were few to trust

and compassion was almost impossible when I lied

to myself and others and God, to protect a cracking truth

that would have exposed what I didn’t dare let people see.