The old neighborhood

The neighborhood still looks the same
adjacent to the block of understanding
4 blocks down from Pizza Man
now just a corner between destiny & restraint

The pentagon shaped houses
the way the snowbanks overtook reason
the slippery alley
The brick church that swallowed up confessions

He lay there still between the sheets
and the play button
underneath, the buried jonquils
and crumbled sunflowers
damp and frozen in the ageless lives
bearing shelter

to the wounds that lay before them
Her tears flowed
and now there just is the
echoes of laughter and hollow memories
of a prolonged one night stand
the roses that lay dead like petals
on the ever changing white lawn

her last claims bypassed from a dead ringtone
the scraping snow plow
the death through shadows
melted under the lights of Keyport
as she doubled another twenty.

MM7272