17

I dreamt dad kicked down the door to give me a hug. I turned off my

computer and let him do it.

That sad feeling after Thanksgiving like you can’t find the words.

I tried on different shirts. Shaved my face when I didn’t need to.

Sliced the living room into two equal halves.

I appreciated the way the morning light sat on the house across the

street. Then ate pie filling for breakfast. Plucked buds from the end of

the jade plant so it would explode the next time I watered it.

Driving at night I imagine crashing into a wall. The van crumbling

into pieces.

I would hit eject and jump the divider. Landing softly in the canal

completely unscathed. Like a red-and-white bobber over a worm. I’d

watch the highway flicker as I drift.

Dad like the Kool-Aid man bursting through the paper.

He broke my ninja stick over his knee but next week replaced it with

a 3” thick dowel.

But dad this stick I could kill you with. But dad this stick I didn’t

find on the hill.

When I left forever my little brother got loud. Mom was a wanderer.

The hallway, her highway.

She dressed like all middle-class white women in the 80’s. Shoulder

pads and a fluffy perm. She cried when we went to war. I asked why.

She said a lot of young men would die.

Desert Storm sounded like a video game. Acne scars looked so cool.

Me and Chris would steal silver valve caps off tires. I’d go back at

night to return them.

Half my life in golden grass and crystal. When Ted handed me his

Leatherman and I snapped the barbed wire so we could escape from

the old railroad officer. The Feather River running through our minds.

Beer bottle blue. Pine trees and valleys and endless ballast. Snowflake

biscuits. Yellow margarine.

After baseball practice, we biked home in the dark. The TVs were

flickering purple and white light.

The drainage ditch was empty so we climbed the fence and sat in it.

Matt L. Roar is a writer and musician from San Francisco, currently living in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in JENKEM Skateboard Magazine, BOAAT, Ampersand Review, The Surfer's Journal, HTML Giant, Weird Sister, The Poetry Foundation, No, Dear, The Brooklyn Poet’s Anthology, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbooks The Shredders (Mondo Bummer) and Probability of Dependent Events (Beard of Bees). His first full-length collection, MY WAR, was released from Spork Press in June of 2022.