BRILL STREET STORIES
Jamiya Leach
In my favorite childhood memory,
there’s my great grandmother’s hot comb:
——————-rotting wire
——————-wrapped around the handle,
my left ear tasting its bitter iron.
There’s Natalie, who lived off of Stuyvesant,
licking the tip of her finger to line my burn.
There is only her and the block that raised us.
It is always summer.
I remember twenty-five cent popsicles.
Frankfurt’s playground.
——————-Sitting perfectly
——————-filthy in the heat of mid-July.
In an alley, the sun easing its blistered clutch,
I taught Natalie how to ride a stolen bike,
Flesh tore across her calf from the pedal.
Is this what it meant to be open?
I remember the house that couldn’t hold anything.
Especially not four girls, one lady cat,
my mother and her boyfriend who hadn’t shot himself yet.
——————-A reminder that we weren’t afraid of our hands then
——————-for the burdens within our grasp.
Outside, red sneakers joined by the laces
hung from telephone wires, meaning our neighbors were holding.
I remember handball. The ball echoing off charred bricks.
I don’t know the word for wanting to belong
in that which begs to spit you out, but we’ll call it Brill Street.
We’ll call it Natalie, we’ll call it waiting for the dust to clear.
To throw is not to fly, but to crash,
——————-our palms pulping blue as homage, farewells.
——————-And I want what I’ve always wanted—
to remember these scars,
evidence of what we left behind.
What good is memory without a home,
without another body to learn its place in.