men and their egos (I turned twenty this summer) are
inseparable
insufferable

begrudgingly
they admit “guess you were right”
believing that will make them heroes,
by full on confessing they are *******

I turned twenty in the summer

my tan legs in cutoffs (it’s summer) drives them to madness,
accused, you are pitiless, for their dreams of you involve ransom  
still, you
search and quiet plead like Abraham, to the heated air,
while listening to Whitney Houston and Ed Sheeran,
(on your earbuds just so nobody knows your weakness)
for just that one good man in the township of
***** and Gomorrah

my mother bitter sneers good luck with that,
forgetting I am now twenty years
so old, so advanced,
that my hopes and aspirations are no longer those
the ones in my high school yearbook

my poetry fills pages,
a human urban renewal,
laying out a city of hope

recalling that ***** and Gemorrah were destroyed