Poem: '11 Roses'

The streetlights of my hometown

Project Write Now is a wonderful arts organization based in Red Bank, NJ. If you are interested in writing, or in supporting young writers, check it out.

I'm currently enrolled in an adult intensive poetry course, and below is my first poem from that class. I want to share it here, just because.

"11 Roses" is based on three prompts inspired by lines from the poetry of Eduardo C. Corral, and a discussion of his work, including "The Autobiography of My Hungers" (accounting for "my" poetic phrase in one of the couplets below)...

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11 Roses

I stared at the deer

Because it stared back at me.

I walked my hometown streets at dusk,

Invisible to schoolboys on careless bicycles,

The women in the nail salon, and the families outside the Dairy Queen.

My reflection in store windows, the only evidence of me.

I held my breath as I passed the cemetery at the edge of town.

Where my father lies.

On the recent anniversary of his death,

I had placed a rock on his gravestone.

It wasn’t there.

I walked further, into the woods,

Hiding an autobiography of my secrets.

How my heart is easily broken.

How I never stopped loving you.

How I am a glint of light now.

Not even a ghost.

In the aurora of distant streetlights,

I blend into the ramble and the thorns.

So I stared at the deer

Because it stared back at me.