In Juvie

Today the older boy carved a moon in my legwith a wire sharpenedon the bedpost. He snappeda pen tube over the mark to make it permanent.

My mother doesn’t pick up the phone on her sideof the partition. I press mine to my facelike an ice pack in case she changes her mind.I want to say I didn’t set the house on fire,

but now I can’t remember the truth.When I get out, Mother will still be a locked door,my fingers will quiver to pass through a flame.I wonder where home will be. Not here

with the base-heads and boostersbut behind the burnt house with the soldiering oak trees.I went there with Dad before he was locked up, too,and fire sprang from our hands like perennials.