The Lonely Walk Home

I see widows crying all the time.
my mother is part of a support group,
their stories are filled with beloved men;
war hero, guitar playing genius, carpenter,
but hers had a bucktooth and hard knuckles,
while they cried to God, she hid a wide grin,
knowing her husband was somewhere
burning in hell, and she believed
just so this could be true.

While other boys dreamt of their father's
returning home from months gone, deployments,
I was drifting somewhere in the Mojave, Sonora,
collecting grainy sand for my den of scorpions,
followed by a pilgrimage to the stormy Pacific,
watching mechanical beasts sit idle by the coast.

Then it was time to leave,
and her lips were sealed, mind the loudest
coyotes ever heard, and they were maniacal.
she'd walk home, thinking, thinking, thinking.

And on the day's I was beaten, where bruises
escaped the stomach, thighs, legs, tiny shoulders,
he'd tell me with his dying liquored breath;
blame it on the bullies, blame it on soldiers unable
to escape their past. and I would feel around
my forehead, unsure where it met my crown.

I listened to the bluejays one summer evening,
and they were readying to stop their music.
amidst an encore, a fierce hawk swooped down
and stole one of their fragile children.
pausing for a moment; they began to sing
one last song.

***

Brandon Shane is a poet, born in Yokosuka Japan. You can see his work in the Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Remington Review, Marbled Sigh, Verdant Journal, RIC Journal, among many others. After moving to the United States from Ogimi Village, Okinawa, he would graduate from Cal State Long Beach.