Recess

In the slumtown of suburbia, we built a city from sticks.We knew that flint kissing flint meant firewe knew that rows of wood splayed like wishbones meant houseswe knew the weapon a stone becomes in the hand of a boy.

I don't recall the name of the dark-skinned girl who called herself my wifenor how many hours I spent etching her likeness into a rock with an army blade,what I do remember is how we dreamed decoration:light gathered in teacups, the perfume of polished maplethe hum of white noise or cars or whatever lives inside of silence.

With arrowheads carved from coke cans, and malice inherited from our fathers,we cracked the skeletons of our neighbors' houses.Dirt cascading around us like dust in a well-lit roomand the president's static on the news somewhere warning of mass destruction.

Evening settled. Bits of afternoon stuck to the tables, the walls, and ebbed likeashes peeled from a lit cigarette.We made angels in our leafy carpet with our eyes closed.The trees again would become trees, and not the castles we'd imagined.      And we'd come, covered in dirt, home.