Images of my childhood home
Clear, crisp, sharp
Like my memories of that time
The maple in the front yard is gone
No more climbing
To beat out the rhythms of life
‘Til we scarred the bark
No more tire, swinging
For us to spin ourselves silly
And drunkenly collide into the trunk
There is a new garage; we never had one
And a new house in the vacant lot
Where I used to blaze trails and build forts
Among the tall grass and apple trees
Half of the pines are still there
That sap-stained our hands and clothes
Where I made campfires in empty coffee cans
Where I climbed to the top
Where my brother got stuck
Coopers’ house across the street is gone
The other Coopers’ house next door is still there
So is the tree we tied David to
We knew it was wrong
But we were young enough to not understand why
The pipeline up Raccoon Hill is still clearly visible
Where Ritchie rode his bike into the trees
Houses of my early motherhood
Clear, crisp, sharp
Like my memories of that time
The tree with the African bees’ nest
So far away in space and time
Another world, another country, another language
The streets I walked to get to mercado
The house of my suegra
The speed bump we fell on…
My son, and me, and my soon-to-be born daughter
Streets and houses sprawl a wider web
Around the small Venezuelan city
Small, like Pittsburgh is small
My brother-in-law’s farm, still the same
The baseball field where my son
First learned to play on a team
The soccer fields where my husband
Played and later coached
Remain unchanged over time
Ochoa, the veterinarian neighbor on our left
Abel, the boy on our right, both born February 29
We broke curfew to celebrate in the year of the riots
We knew it was wrong
But cared too much about friends and neighbors
To realize the danger we defied
The sting of tear gas still fresh in the air
Home, here and now
Blurred, unfocused pixels
Like my life these days
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