Overnight

Overnight
there are foreign profusely
dripping blossoms
in the trees outside the
Greyhound station on the brink of
downtown.

Why does the still
spring air
through a window screen
at dusk
resemble the soft
static of diagonal rains
buzzing in a bloody
pink?

Overnight
you have
quit your job and moseyed back
to the pockmarked highway
half-covered in fallen rotting fruit
in the ripening season.

Why did I hurt my mother's
heart
when she had me unwrap
the framed photo she
brought me
as a gift
on no particular
occasion?

How can I communicate
to her
that my heart cannot
bear another reminder
of the pounding love
relentless and severe
between us
that cripples me daily?

Overnight
murderous sirens
distancing and approaching
turn back to the
barks of morning dogs and
confused birds.

Overnight
your social media
statistics have dropped
to dismal figures.

Overnight
someone cut your
father's hair
and improved his mood
and notion of self-worth
dramatically.

Overnight
your grandmother can
hardly make it up the set
of stairs without creaking like
a floor of crushed popcans.

Why do you hear such footsteps
in other rooms of your apartment
overnight
when there is no grandmother
present?

Sit with me
please
both sets of grandparents
dead
and
alive in my cramped apartment
in this neighborhood of
foreign profusely dripping
blossoms
that can smell of heaven
and death at once.

Sit with me
and let us admire this immaculately
framed photograph

a gift from my mother—

it is of the train station

(the one at the end of my street
collecting wind
like an open mouth
left chapped
and gaping
overnight).