It Thundered at Breakfast
It thundered at breakfast and again, while I moved furniture & built a bed.
Milton was wrong; the mind can be changed by place and time. July & I can almost forget the tanks that stormed the dog park in January. I screw in the side rails of the new bed frame, test them with my weight. Every morning, a rental company lent out their SUVs to be fitted with cages. These things can be forgiven, you said.
Elders detained without their medication. Worms in the food. These things, you said, can be forgiven. This, too: ICE agents who preyed on a soft blue truck that turned, rinsed & gleaming, toward home. They took the driver one way and the truck another. I fall onto the bare mattress.
Motherfuckers, my friend hissed from the cafe. They’re here. Unmarked van. Milk frother sputtering. Love you, I said, just in case. Our barista sighed, Third time this week.
But go on, say you don’t remember. Say it’s over, the first gunshot in the neighborhood just a marble that dropped. Never mind the nine others that followed. My friend, not stunned awake in her knit blanket. She slept in, nearly missing her shift. And I never had to panic. Alex Pretti was sitting at a high top having a donut, some raspberry filling dripping down his chin. Fuck you. I died with him, and then I had to wake up the next day and watch you forget to cry.
