Cars are now perched birds in treetops
who shimmy back and forth like dancers ready to fly
Phone poles & oak trees had a night out dancing, they
are now black-out girls that couldn’t hold their liquor at frat filth parties.
They are unwanted vomit scattered on dead grass and dim streets.
The twin palm trees from mom’s backyard are now divers in the pool.
The sun, the sole light source, now
radiates in waves, darkness to light to darkness, that stays.
The air is now a stench, rank like kitty litter from the not-quite running water.
My mom’s safe deposit box the only thing unchanged, untouched & standing.
She is now parking her Buick in the spot with the least ashes, & strolling towards
the bank. Its walls are now spread on cement as debris.
The teller’s desks are now ghosts.
She is eyeing the security guard who is sitting in a folding chair at the front.
He wears the same clothes as usual, asks the same question,
“How may I help you, ma’am?” the words exit his lips as if it’s any
day at the bank. She is now telling him her business, and as she starts towards the back, the guard is now trigged, “Enter through front door, ma’am!”
Her feet guess where the door once was, begin once more.
Mom is now collecting her savings, and leaving out “the door.”
A crescent moon now replaces the guard’s solemn mouth.
Is it better to be Don Quixote,
to find bliss through deviant imagination?