Sleeping with the Moon

homelessness: to be uprooted, to be without shelter or provisions; rare: affording no home

months after you left home, someone saw you on the bus, so quiet you sat, peaceful they said behind your horn-rimmed glasses, black against the blackness of your skin burnt from the dust of nightmares, peaceful they said and barefoot though the weather was not yet warm not cold, on morning someone saw you near the park walking past the statue of the city's great pioneers the founders of wide streets and homes fit for grand families while the rain fell in great swoops over and over and we dared to call it spring behind the safety of plate glass windows, wind blowing gauze white curtains roses and poppies in gleaming china vases - they said they knew you by your closely-cut hair, trusting eyes large behind oval black rimmed glasses your face grown dry mouthed and wary, the easy laughter burning inside what's left of your dreams after another night of sleeping rough with no house but the moon - someone said they saw you on the ferry heading west beyond the San Juans beyond the thirty mile limit, it must have been you they said the look so familiar they almost called you by name, i know you would not have answered i know i barely knew you myself glimpsed on the corner after the coldest night the weather offered, i knew you only by the tilt of your head the thin curtain of tears you kept from falling on your cheeks and i pulled to the curb and wept - don't worry you said this is my demon - and i wept for all the demons that haunt us and the little boy who trusted too easily, laughter your only addiction, and the way my arms ached to pull in the body trembling under that ragged sleeping bag, to rock you once more to read a favorite story and hold back the raw scrap of time as the world rushed into another day and i curled into myself and i wept


(c) Colleen McElroy, Sleeping with the moon