Asphalt

I’m seven.   

Barefoot, my mother runs after Raul’s Ford.

Don’t leave me, babe!  

Don’t leave me!

At 33, she calls.  

Frantic.  Dying sounds

conveyed via cellphone.

She ran over my cat.

In the street, the cat is convulsing.

If I’m crying, perhaps he won’t

yell at me, she thinks.

I’m sure of it.

It’s worked with other men.

At 33, I leave my dinner

and lock myself in a room.

I’m twenty-one.  

Puke stains the tops of my feet.

I didn’t quite make it to the sink.

Don’t die on me, mijo.

Why are you gonna die on me!?

Haphazardly, I wipe the yellow

mush, enough of it, not to track

it to the bath.

At 3 a.m., I’ve parked crookedly.  

In the street, I am barefoot.

Enough tequila in me to set

her voice ablaze.

I’m five.

My father fights with my mother and 

leaves with my uncle.

Move, move! she insists.

I’m pushed aside.   Having

just waved goodbye to them, my hand

goes through the rip in the grey screen.

Why don’t you just fuck him, too!

She yells, and the neighbors duck their

heads out trailer doors and 

manufactured screenless windows.

His truck speeds off, and she’s left

huffing the dust.

Such heaps of asphalt to rub away.