poetry writing challenge - day 2

write an outsider poem. You can be the outsider; someone else can be the outsider.

••••

Cul de Sac: Juniper Place

It was all wrong. So hard to say why.
The fabric in their sweaters, the thickness in the men’s necks.
The dumb jewelry pagodas in the mall with near-empty corridors
that smelled and felt of nothing.

Plants I didn’t recognized lined the street towards a house I slept in,
A house I didn’t sleep in. A house I sat outside of and ringed in smoke.

In the morning the juniper trees in the backyard were
as beautiful as any I’d ever seen - or more.
Seventeen. I counted again.
I have never lived in a house more lovely.

I stood in my bathrobe and turned on the little lawn.
My neighbors’ son – there again, lifting weights,
his mother, - a paper white curtain,
looking at him, or past him
as he grunted and pressed.

The day before, over the fence, she gave me Pat Nixon’s meatloaf recipe
and told me, without segue, her husband hadn’t touched her,
not even by accident,
in years.

I stood and turned on the little lawn.
I looked around myself, my hands and feet.
I did not exist.

But the house was lovely.
It had seventeen trees in the backyard alone.