I stare out the window
of my second floor apartment,
feel such an insignificant and nebulous thing.
Trapped in blackness,
my passions garble and wilt.
Inside the glass,
reflections crack open
its own cynical chant.
Screw you, girl.
Eye lids red and swollen,
I can’t leave even if I wanted to.
I’m infected,
have no desire to spread me around.
Ants criss-cross tattered carpet.
Photo of mother
bleeds advice long since ignored.
Night is night after night.
A black stream, pitiable and empty.
A subject without predicate.
End of the world
as a property of leaving home
and having no one to care for me.
Bare bulb light is damning evidence
of where I live.
Shadows are warnings.
Don’t cry, I tell myself.
But tears are salt
and salt is where the world began.
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine and Porter Gulch Review.