Michael Mintron

So close together, their faces could be curtains
drawn across a stage. Some turmoil we couldn’t see.

Hadn’t pictured my parents like that before.
Did they already sense catastrophe unfolding?

I remember a row of ambulances on the highway.
What happened out there? Who can I ask now?

Surely, we were happy. Children at a birthday party.
My big glasses, tongue between my teeth.

You and your sister, cardigans, heads tilted, ribbon
in your hair. That’s when we lived near the water tower.

One of those estates with disjointed stories and fin-
tailed cars. It’s not what I think of now.

There was the bookstore on a corner, small lamps
marking rows of novels, black-spined reprints.

The classics. Worlds opening up. Just a kid
imagining big cities, museums, endless talk.

Biking home, I had a feeling you’d now call trauma.
The fear of finding everything gone.

Michael Mintrom lives in Melbourne, Australia. His poetry has recently appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, London Grip, The Soliloquist, and Syncopation Literary Journal.