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