Homecoming
You say
you are afraid to wear
the pink sweater that
blushes your skin,
to be laughed at
in your bluff-side town.
So you put it on here,
in the city.
How your mother wished
for you, among her seven,
to be the one collared
in a catholic neighborhood.
Perhaps she saw you in pink
someday, with a nickname, Golden Boy,
worrying lines of a secret
in her bathroom mirror.
Now, I look on,
as you look out the window
onto the tracks that take you
from your blue attic room, where
you still hear brothers teasing
faint the stale air that quilts
time for safekeeping.
Trains jar your room,
loosen the door to the kitchen.
You hear your father talking to the dog,
and moans of the ironing board
as your mother presses hard
her Sunday cotton dress.
Lisa Dewey