postcard via broken #2 ticonderoga pencil on napkin

poem published for Communication High School's literary magazine Evolution

i can promise you that the electric city never glowed. or maybe it did, and i couldn't see it through the car window, long since clouded in cigarette ashes and mucus and the solid-bodied discomfort of the sorority we were hazed into at the nicu. their blood oath is no more thick than water (or as you call it: family. they have different names for things in scranton). that's a set up, by the way. here's the punchline: minimum wage can't pay sorority fees.

we share pizza in the backseat and let SiriusXM 60's on 6 eat the silence. my dad drives us back home (don't mistake new jersey home for scranton home. one gets its name from its warmth, i don't know what else to call the other). there's a slice saved for my fathers mother, and he tries not to remember that he will decide if her nursing home will have the rocking chair with or without the cushion. they up his hourly rate twenty-five cents because he dyes coca-cola cans well. this will not earn a cushion, he still sleeps on her couch. there's still dog hair on it. stella died years ago, but no one has bothered to clean. my sinuses close and i realize there was nothing grounding me but the smell of cheap tobacco.

my sister and i sit in a line like prisoners, waiting to be examined. my sister gets the boyfriend question. am i doing well in school? of course, i answer. i inherit fears. there's a room in a nursing home to be paid for under my last name.