5022 NE Going

Going going gone

Melaina kicked me out

then turned it back over

when they foreclosed on her

It was both our house after all

We ate beans for three months

to save the down payment

The small green room

for Victoria

The medium blue

for Monte and Paul

We skidded over the long wooden

boards of the master bedroom

and Melaina put up a

ballet bar and mirrors

for my daily pliés

Vic had a piano

Monte had a baseball glove

and Paul was a golden-haired boy

amid Filipinos and Yakimas

a two-year-old sleepy head

falling into his bowl of

dal at the kitchen table

I studied French and made

pate à chou and blanquette of chicken

and on the weekends

Melaina made the best

lumpia and punsit

this side of the Pacific

She worked long days on

big machines she mastered

just as she mastered the

Toyota squareback in

our barn of a garage

Our yard was an acre or more

until they sold the back half

to the Tonganese villagers

who hacked down the

laurel hedges with machetes

We'd look out over the

red-leafed yard, then

down the tree-lined street

of Northeast Going

We watched the harvest moon

rise over the school yard

at the end of the block

We were deliriously happy

then fundamentally stressed

then self-exiled

We never spoke about

the terminal grief of

our own abusive childhoods

We finished three years there

five years all together
five years of trying so damn hard
to be normal