Oleander

By Karen Pittelman

Each day you return with

terrible news of the world,

hoping only to slip home

unseen.

 

And even our locked front door

is never locked enough,

you startle

at my softest palm,

watch windows in your sleep.

 

I know you would build me a cabin

of hard pine and cedar, lined with

the sweet dust milk crates of

our parent’s LPs.

 

I just don’t know if there will ever be land

to build it on.

 

I tell myself turn oleander,

learn to bloom with menace

instead of this

indiscriminate garden weed,

 

Useless to you in the wilderness,

wooden nickel when

you need

a weapon, a tool.

 

Did I waste my wish on being heard?

 

What if this chord,

this tin can drum,

what if this song in our lungs,

 

What if it is instead

the silence

that will save us?

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