My cousin Doug and I
on the streets of Daytona,
Florida: he’s artistic,
hands me a deflated, red
balloon without a word and
takes out the camera- I
haunt dark streets
pinning his look to my
white, Keds with dirt/ later,
we scream in the attic
because we think there are ghosts
and he films it all, the way
I run out of the house and through
the surrounding woods like
something still chases
(he can keep up)
then we bang out some Hitchcockian
melody on the piano as our overture.
When it is too hot
sometimes he plays his guitar
in the room my mother grew up in
where all the family claims
an old man died terribly
who hid the liquor beneath the bed
and tripped down the spiral staircase
drunk, into the sunny kitchen.
And many mornings more, my grandmother
who still cooks three full meals a day
makes me cantaloupe with sugar on top
or cheesy grits, before I help her
by snapping the peas for dinner that night
or watch in anticipation if she is making
peach cobbler. My cousin was the first
of peculiar children I learned to see
why growing up in this family
when ways are strange and
strangers are friends
who could take us away.
We like black roses
though and sketched
constellations of our own in
the night before there
were words
so we could see, so we could speak.
