In The Suburbs
The pool’s artificial waterfall sounds
enough like a creek. This kind of grass
only exists in white-picketed backyards,
but it looks soft. And growing. Natural enough.
Let’s pretend the oaks were here
before we were, that they weren’t just
brought in for the aesthetics.
Make us believe life can still plant itself here.
Pretend the sun glints through anything
other than the tinted windows of a BMW.
The middle school down the road reeks
of cheap perfume and expensive weed.
A girl stands on the scale every day.
Another gives hours to her reflection.
They will never think themselves enough.
At night, wedding rings clatter to the glossy tile.
Hear them echo down the streets,
past the silent dinner tables,
mingle with the muffled sounds of
splintering bedroom walls.
Here, every child gets a trophy
because every child is a trophy.
Every dinner party: a chance to compare
whose shines more.
The friendships form when you find someone
who speaks the same language of gossip as you.
A mother tucks her boy into her own dreams,
sends him sailing to claim a life she didn’t.
You will not see any homeless people
along the highway. Only people
the adults name “lazy.”
A high school senior has never worked
a day in his life. Has shelves stocked with
silver platters and knows where
his parents hide the nice vodka.
He’ll ride the family name
into any college he wants.
So it is easy to see why he thinks he can take
what a girl never said he could have.
Teenagers hide their Friday
nights in Sunday mornings.
Pastors spit their button verses, and we listen.
Gather gospel songs into Coach purses,
and hope they can be knit into a smile
white enough to cover the sin.
The fear of being a disappointment
will make sure the tired never sleep.
The fear of being ridiculed
will sit heavy in every wallet.
The fear of being trapped
in this suburb’s rush hour forever
will press my ear onto my mother’s chest.
Her heartbeat is not a cold ticking.
My father’s arms. Not the hollow limbs
of statue trees. My sisters’ warm, smooth laughter
is the same color as the sunset here.
Dinnertime finds us together, a huddle
of flesh and bone, everything human
and messy and real, the failed tests
and the fighting and the doubting and
despite all of this, loving still.
Seeking a breathing God in plastic steeples.
Trying to be permanent in passing places.
This neighborhood’s dim streetlights
will not claim us
nor wash us in false brightness.
We strain to stay unmasked.
We, washing the gold plating
from our skin.