Home from College - Patricia McMillen

"He died," she says-- like that, as if it's just
another word. Then that long sigh, long
slow ride down Willow Road, landfill one side,
wet baseball field the other. I won't cry

in front of her. The road bucks up, car floats
over the bridge; then a flash of neon
shocks my stoned eyes: sunset on the strange-
ly calm half-timbered storefronts of childhood.

Stopped for the crosswalk, Mom still doesn't
look at me. "Drugs," she says at last. Suicide,
foul play-- she can't, won't, guess. All she knows
is what the cops told her: his body of the floor,

an unmade bed, my letter on his desk. I had
not wanted to marry him anyway. Next day
I take the car, drive past his house, but I can't
knock. I spend July writing on steno pads,

trying to get it right: that flash of light and how,
last time we talked, he'd seemed relieved rather
than hurt. Mom begs, but I can't snap out of it:
I write and write, as if I could revise.

This poem was originally published in After Hours, the 10th Anniversary Issue, along with poems by our very own Katy Renz.