The Wall Street Journal // Sept. 20, 2020
The courthouse that calls to me
is only five blocks from home
but I drive anyway and you
are shirtless on the corner, the rain
and your skin each terrified of the other. The light
stays red long enough for you to ask
for a lift and maybe I’ll drop you
off at the plasma center
or maybe I won’t. Maybe you’ll ask
to bum a cigarette
or pull a knife on me
and I’ll have no choice but to kill you. Maybe
we will ride getaway together, speed through a school
zone, take every billboard into our palms, clench,
crumble, and spread their remains
over the 1950s. We will set fire to a Bentley
and all of language, murder
a store clerk with memory and sink his body
in the river. They already know. Maybe
they will lock us in a ward, make us
case study subjects of fathers
without fathers. Maybe we will rob
the city block of blue and give every bit back
to prayer logic. Maybe we will call home
and someone will answer. They already know
of all those burnt out cars,
all those bodies in the river,
all those hollow words
for which we’ll hang. They already know
and hope they have no choice
but to keep us cuffed
to all the crimes we must commit.
***
Photo by Nate Grant on Unsplash
