My father uprooted the linoleum tile
after purchasing the house and noticing carpenter ants.
The owners of the house before had laid down
their best pine colored flooring in the kitchen
back in 1959.
I would toddle in and out of the doorway
playing with the grout spacers,
and reaching for sourdough in the pantry.
All while stepping tiny pink sandals
around the dead ants.
I wanted to help my father, but was too afraid
to go near the oven.
The oven, whose
exhaust fan would snarl
like an animal of the night.
Incandescent, where they found Sylvia Plath.
Stained with oil
like a forgotten Jackson *******.

Foreboding
of it’s adjacent countertop
where eventually would lay
divorce papers.

The day we met
she offered me a cigarette
Trying to keep afloat,
she burned a hole through her throat.

Well-polished and looked clean
I had never known a girl from Manchester Green.
Too nervous to speak to me,
she grabbed a bottle, so that she could breathe.

Strangling me with her Tiffany necklace,
I pinched my pennies to avoid being reckless.
I caught her falling for another dose,
As I fell for the blonde in the cashmere coat.

I picked her brain about the dust in her nose,
“you can't **** the young.”
Words confined to my tongue

This was just another secret tryst,
she was never much of a romanticist.

**** the twin-size mattress,
that cheap indigo color.
Where my best friend’s legs,
her hands and knees,
were entangled in struggle.

**** his barbell body
heavy and cold to the touch.
She had been hunted  
by someone that she trusted.

**** the world that assumed  
she was kissed. Not gripped,
nor crushed under his pressing force.

**** the cinder block walls  
of that college dormitory,
where she stared and refused
to sleep in her own bed
After that night.

**** the catchy tune of breath
rolling over teeth  
that play in her head.
**** her father. He would say
he doesn’t approve of her *******.

So, she chose to stay quiet.
Forgettably quiet.

bike's rusted chain
against the walls of my childhood
a new family lives inside
but what they don't see
are the notes of cardamom and burnt orange
rolls of film that my parents and I left behind
capturing sneakers over gravel
along the east river
toward the steel Hell Gate
as dad jogged beside me
his caramel skin
against the sycamores
my first time learning how to ride
they don't feel the bruises and scrapes nor
taste the paella we shared for dinner that evening
they only see what we gave them,
an empty house with matte finish