I go five hours away to see raw wild populated by deciduous, coniferous,
lichen and moss, my forgotten too long jeans iced and slippery forbidden adulthood,
here there are roots in cracks, mushrooms spring up in the morning dew
and bake as if the manicured lawn roasts them with oil and pepper.
There is wildness here too. The pavement burns my bare feet as I run
to the trash can and I laze a moment too longingly at the hazy blue above
and I know the homeless by name. I know the newly homeless by clothes.
I want to help tame this wild urban avalanche and my dollar bills are thin
my fear blankets the landscape as the gunshots are heard in the distance.
Each echoes last year’s road rage three cars down from me. The wild of fireworks
too close to my skin, cheeks flushed with shame. I didn’t help. Didn’t know
to help. Found myself in the cemetery talking to my grandmother.
The grave marker has been sheered off by someone else’s burial and my roses
and coffee are offering for the wild of my heart and learning to beg.
Frantic heartbeats and cement and pavement and stone and trees planted
by law every five meters or so and I am choked by the monotony, how I
am homeless. Cannot sit in my car without police or without giving too
much too much as my palm brushes against palm as if there is urban
prayer between us. Some hopeless gasp of heart slides into ferns,
wanders over boulders and looks out over the river, small from my tallness
away from tucked habit, dandelion love, and rubbing cement
as if to call breath from it. My cheeks redden from sunlight and the not gentle
breeze of jealousy. I want this wilderness as my own. I want to wild within it
and to leave cracked cement and leaking garbage behind.
I want to take each friend that asks for dollar bills and show them
we need more to survive than a dollar menu. I need more to survive
than a manicured lawn and yard I cannot walk through filled with blooming death.
Let me be allergic to ferns that fold around me and the canopy that sways
soft lull and not the orange marmalade studs that stand in planters and that cannot
teach us to withstand the coming storms.
—
Kim Malinowski is the author of Home, Phantom Reflection, Buffy’s House of Mirrors, Clutching Narcissus, and Death: A Love Story. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Rhysling Award. She is training to be an archeologist. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable.
