2 a.m. The woman behind the counter in the White Castle
lights a cigarette, plucks a dollar from the tip cup, catches
her lone customer staring at a bruise purpling her cheek.
Across the street her husband’s lit like the jukebox
in the corner of the Blue Moon Bar & Grill. He slouches
on a stool, picks his nose clean, thinks of his stepson’s
smooth olive flesh, the scant wiry hairs, the thin dangle
of the pud. Outside snow falls, a frenzy of flakes
the sky can no longer contain. The waitress dumping grinds
cannot guess why her son has changed, why he practices
silence, studies maps in his room, plotting endless escapes.
She cannot see the knife he clutches in bed, how he resists
the undertow of sleep, staring at the nite lite’s sad blue halo
till all is a blur... or how sometimes he wakes pinned beneath
someone’s heavy breathing, sheets blinding as snowdrifts
in the moonlight. This morning the boy traces a crack--
faint scar--across the face in the mirror, closes his eyes,
imagines the moment a snowflake dissolves
like communion on his tongue.
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