Hometown

This place used to be more quiet, when I was growing
up so tall and bold, so much louder than anyone else
we'd ever known and no one knew what to think of me
or anything.

I come home in the summer and notice all the little
splinters and splits, which stores have been abandoned,
which cars have been hit. Every warm day is a little
bit different.

The cops from one town over started cracking down;
so the methheads scattered through the pine trees,
like cockroaches suddenly bathed in refrigerator light,
all skeletal and brown.

They swept through the green leaves into our yards,
wandering, searching, not-sleeping, mattresses
on the floor, ash in the windowsills and after a day
in the sun, one of them drowned.

But they multiply every day, all spiny and spindly
and dark. I see them swinging too hard in the town
park where I used to play with my best friend and
we would smoke cigarettes there as soon as we
turned fifteen.

Maybe I don't belong here and maybe I'll never find
comfort in the arms of that old tire swing but still I'd
rather things stay warm and twinkling, not turn brown
and chemical and stinking.