I can’t tell you what it meant.
The rooms,
the music playing inside them.
The linoleum stained
and too expensive to replace.
I can tell you
why the arcade’s arrival changed my life.
Because it was Saturday
and all I needed to run off
was sweat-cured shoes
and a wad of dollars.
Because Dad yelled at the television
and Mom threatened to leave
after dinner every night.
I learned to loathe
the died-down wind,
to love the calendar
thrown in the trash.
Days I saw nothing
but a blank in the mirror
and learned to keep that news
to myself.
Cue to a sky
as endless in its longing
as the radio’s voice
pleading for love, all the while knowing
how love likes
to shut the door behind it.
I preferred the snarl,
the speeding around town
in a rusted car.
Spitting curses,
spinning the dial.
The wind whipping ashes.
The passing around
of someone’s 21st-birthday tequila.
Home.
A place to rip up
floorboards, report cards,
anything that might support
the weight of leaving.
Gone are the days
my brother turned up Metallica
while I listened
through the bedroom wall,
but it was after he pulled
the trigger on himself
that I hauled
all his albums to my room.
Stole his change jar to buy
my first book of poems