Suburban Dawn
Amy Ashton Handy

We kids craved stories

in dark starved red nights

light polluted by the city; we craved

connective knowledge of families so transitional

they feather-kissed our lives then slogged

on leaving us behind

or we left them still

wanting 200 year legacies burrowed into walls

and trees our grandfathers carved with hearts so permanent

that fifty years later the bark scar had not begun

to heal we, plastic wrapped in delineated space, wanted

to suffer together and to overcome

desperately comfortable

between never-dark and never-wild we

congregated late in parking lots

shared by our churches and our strip malls,

the lots and the road home sign-lit by

Wal-mart,

our story house,

held what we knew and lived

on sale and mass

produced.

The world was all for us and

we never dreamed our ways out.