
What I remember is a worker falling
toward driveway asphalt,
muscular like my father,
paint can hurling from his grip
that loosened as the ladder lost
its footing on uneven earth.
What I remember
is the smooth arc cerulean made
and the way its spill formed
an almost-question mark
as if to mock the importance of celebration
_
Someday I’ll return to the place
depicted by my memory, overgrown
with carpetweed and hedges,
and abandoned,
and through the chipped cerulean
I’ll find the little closet
with my rumpled clothes,
and sit down, drinking nothing but
the musky air by the window,
and wait for him to finish
dressing, one pant leg, then the other,
and wait
until the atmosphere of the room
takes back the oxygen in the dawn,
and wait,
until each wrinkled crease
in the sweaters and khakis
is as smooth as childhood,
and wait¾
At a certain time, that closet,
that room, that house,
will turn completely into sunlight.
_
I’ll pull my pants down
and listen for the faint zipper
on blue jeans, and…
the chance of maybe not this time
is already gone¾
fickle, oblivious, a hummingbird
launching off its branch
for another tree¾
my hand hurrying to strip the T-shirt,
to get there,
that moment of undoing.
_
The roar of the worker’s howl,
and the complete uncertainty of cerulean,
as it curves and shimmers in the light,
and the inexplicable candor
which my babysitter
made his presence known,
then wiped his body with a rag¾
are one¾
the birthday, the nowhere, the nothing¾
the perfectly baked cake
and the spilt paint’s sprawl.
Domenic Scopa is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Johnson Poetry Prize and Garvin Tate Merit Scholarship. His poetry and translations have been featured in Poetry Quarterly, Reed Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, and many others.