Wilder Street

Rent: $265/month. My mother

had no other options, her stipend

for fourteen years of marriage

to a burning bed. We saw nothing

but a shitty neighborhood, a rooftop

accessible from the bathroom window.

At dusk we exited like burglars

and smoked her stolen cigarettes, trying on

adulthood like a half slip. She saw only

freedom, a place where bruises heal.

 

 

--April Salzano