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You asked for a second chance
this is it:
driving past your childhood house,
mistaking the sweat slick on your neck
for a girl from another time,
lying in the dirt,
begging for summer.
A suburban fence. No power.
Nothing keeping you in the backyard.
Forgive the city;
it has not made you this way.
Your name is written nowhere on these walls.
Here is your second chance.
No longer young-bodied, fragile.
You ask for so much.

Call it bloodshot eyes at four in the morning.
Call it a stranger’s car door,
two people in the shower,
radio static,
someone’s daddy’s yelling.
Body against body against mankind.
Still, you watch their face change
each day you know them.
How brief you knew them for.
You never really know them, do you?
Somebody is home.
This is a home.
And you are passing by.
Clutch the only thing you’ve ever held:
a wheel at dusk,
a life after summer.
Keep asking where your chances went.
Keep swallowing pride and pity,
and your own spit,
until you’ve driven past it.