Wild West

Wild West

I was smothered
But I didn’t know until the plastic was on my face
My mouth sucking and sucking, the plastic taut
And translucent, a window into my mouth
A flailing tongue and straight, white teeth
Bleached and once braced.

There’s something about suburbia they don’t tell you
That it lives elsewhere
Breathes into apartments with the breeze
Lights up condos
That the myth will follow you, even if you don’t chase it.

The wild west, a myth they said in those school days,
I’ve got a bigger one the teacher giggled
Her desk ornate with children’s photos,
I don’t know if they were hers,
Only that there was
A husband absent.

A woman once said to me,
my mother, but a human being first,
“How strange to think who you would be, if he’d chosen to be with me.”
But he did not choose her.
Not after all that.
Still there is the supposition
And the suspicion,
Goodbye house she will say soon
And further south she will retire, with my little old father,
who did nothing but try to be good

Sometimes, when the afternoon light dims
Tranquilized by the evening breeze
My throat tightens, and I want to cry
My apartment windows are barred and blinded
They remind me of my teeth once, as a child, an adult-becoming,
I try to cry, in that soft light coming through
The blinds tilted at such an angle that I can not see out.
But I can’t cry, and don’t change the blinds to see,
And don’t open the window,
I let the air stifle and still, warm and
Wait for a distraction.