empty neighborhood streets by Hannah Levin (14, Arizona)

same footholds i tread, same day-glow awash with sweat
but it’s winter now. cold changes tarmac the same way that
frost nips at potholes (or maybe just people). this pavement
is a prayer, every crack a scripture. you’re more devout in the dark

---

the basement of my mind is becoming the mezzanine.
i’m not quite sure how i’m supposed to feel about that. or about growing older, or
about how i’m everything and nothing at all. sometimes i see
things i shouldn’t, sing songs of lost. rift nibbles at the seams of

continuum. awakened with sidewalk cicadas, milky lightning forks paths
between humanity and change. alive. choice. alive. rejoice. we are alive.

even now, i think of the pupa, how it gets bigger every day, tantalized by escape.
there is no change on these streets. there is no difference in grout & gravel,
no diversity in peaky hedges, no dichotomy in cookie-cutter houses. my ancestors
were slaves in egypt, breaking their backs to mash straw into clay and now i can

buy bricks at home depot. isn’t it funny how this home isn’t really a home,
this pulpit absent of a preacher? we can laugh about it later, but only if you promise

to grant me vacant stares: you let me walk back alone. i say something about how i’ll call tonight
and you agree; we never do. this neighborhood makes liars out of us both

perhaps you’d never answer.