Poems · poetry · Uncategorized

“Hung Out to Dry”

“Hung Out to Dry”

Many, many summers ago,

when I lived atop of Bunker Hill Street,

my Mother dried the cleaned clothes,

by hanging them on a drying horse rack.

Time and a breeze,

were the common necessaries to make it work.

The summer windows would be open,

and late at night my parents would argue.

Sometimes muffled,

Other times clear.

A child of small,

hiding beneath Star Wars bedsheets.

Trying to understand the guttural nuance of the word fucking.

Spit forth in anger and anxiety.

I didn’t know what it meant,

but knew it was bad.

It sounded awful.

Violent, and final.

The peace of a post fight is full of tension,

and on occasion my mother would climb into my bed, or my sister’s bed.

Then it was over.

The next day, neighbors would find something else to look at when we walked by.

What I remember most was how dry the clothes were when we touched them in the mornings.

That, and playing hide and seek among the wet clothes just freshly hung out, so my mother could go to sleep on her green couch before my father got home from work.

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