Immature
June 24, 2007 @ 10:57 a.m.

Immature

I don’t think his mother ever pampered him
like ours pampered us,
bouncing us atop knees and laughing
heartily over beans and gravy.
His mother bought him toys.

I saw them: patterned kickballs and jacks
and tin men he’d line up and sweep aside—
a bubble wand pinwheel, a kite

with crisp,
flight-ready wings
which soared over the clapboard fence,
over our backyard,
into our maple;

and I remember his face
when he shoved open our sticky gate
and looked in.

I remember the spew of vowels,
an elongated gasp which ended in
the smack of lips on teeth.
“Why are there so many boxes?”

I shrugged, and he untangled his battered kite
which he tried and failed to make fly.
He sniffled as he rushed back out the gate.

His toybox overflowed in cars and airplanes
and little plastic animals.

My sister and I,
we played house among our boxes,
built a cardboard castle,
and pretended to be opposing knights
clashing wrapping paper tube blades,

but we never cried
when rain melted our castle.

. .

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Version 14: Hurricane. Photo from freefoto, font is Hurricane.