Your photo album looks like mine.
Grandparents and great-aunts with horned-rimmed glasses
holding babies on knees.
Before they leave.
Large leather chairs
and
floral patterned couches
and
heavy curtains draped around
window-mounted air conditioning units that sometimes worked and
always
leaked.
Small children playing on dusty hardwood floors
rolling plastic trucks bought from supermarkets
over cracks
and over clothing destined for the laudromat.
Empty beer cans
and
overflowing ashtrays
and
fat cockroaches scurrying toward the cracks in the wall.
Was your imagination your only refuge too?











