Second Monday After Easter

Second Monday After Easter


The sky clears its throat.

Asphalt yawns with grass
and dandelions trampled by rubber hi-top soles
inked with initials that were scratched out twice.

Ragged fog lifts from a vestige of playground
half devoured by woods. The lot fills with sedans and minivans dusted in
fluo-green tree pollen and the afternoon influx of grade-schoolers
rushes forth, chased by stroller-wheeling mothers in tracksuits
shouting after them not to eat the wild mushrooms or play
near the river where she threw the song she’d written two days ago in seventh period on a tissue crumpled in her back jeans pocket
and leaned over the railing of the bridge watching it dissolve.

She clicks her gum a final time and spits it out to mingle with
clover leaves and candy wrappers floating in curbside pools of
last night’s rain. Somebody’s toddler attempts to climb and
somebody’s mutt lifts its leg and pisses against a
wooden telephone pole carved with massacred hearts.

She scratches his initials off the sole of her shoe for the third time before beating the storm home.