You still appear in my dreams
gone nightmares
where bionic cockroaches crawl
my kitchen floor
not quote scary enough
to scare me.
Sometimes you laugh
more often you don’t
even smile
which you always did
on command.
Instead you’re frozen
in the place no one watches over
where I left you
a figment of my dreams.
At a party someone said
I should call the news.
Make a scene
about your being
above and beyond;
the unfairness of where you are
the one chance application your teacher lost
the way your father appears;
the way it scares you;
the news?
On 6th and D you tell me
“I’m on my own from here,
it isn’t safe,â€
(you don’t say for you or me),
spin on your heels and
I watch you
disappear
clutching your bag of books—
the threads
we have in common.
Spotlighted by the bodega neon sign
I wonder,
will I be useless?