I think it’s important to note the gravity of the situation. I can’t sleep with any of the men that attract me. Can you imagine me at 17? I invited over one of the fire fighters from my district because his bald head reflected the spring sun. Neither of us knew how young I was, and he thought I was the visiting-son of a woman who burnt her balcony roof over a grill. Ha ha, he was also a paramedic, so I waited for my dad to divorce her and for the house to be humongous and victoriously alone. It was almost summer then, and his station was only three blocks up the cemetery.
Something about Queens you might not know: the streets look solemn, and two nuns might stare at you for smiling at them, but in the turn of your fence no one knows you. My whole life my neighbors were estranged, so were the park rangers, the cops, and the firefighters. So when I saw him while walking home from school I hid my backpack in a bush and said hello. Wouldn’t it be nice to drink something? And it was cool to drink sprites in a big house with no one in it, until my brother got out of detention at 6pm. I didn’t know what to say other than the hole was fixed and the furniture is gone because my stepmom took it.
There were so many empty rooms in the house-- I shared one with my brother because we couldn’t separate so soon after the womb. Two bedrooms empty, living room empty, dining room, two bathrooms and a kitchen. There was a six-foot space by a window near the oven where he took my pants off while I looked out to the wilderness of the backyard, exactly the spot where my mother taught me to like ham in 2002. She waited hard until I ate it; He knew exactly where my face wouldn’t hurt pressed up against the window.
Had he been there when I was seven? Could my mom have burnt arepas onto the breakfast nook enough to have her son’s round cheeks perfectly placed onto the curtain? My own saliva had his dick in me. I could feel my mom, brushing my short hair against the grain while he pulled my bangs, my brother throwing plastic things into dead Maspeth, my dad taking turns for his sons’ opposite games.
I still can’t sleep with any men! Maybe lust is something for teens. Tonight I feel like massive love is against me; I can’t get out of bed for someone whose pants shape remotely like a penis, my face hurts slightly, Bushwick is only a block away from Queens. My window suddenly gets dewed at 5am. In Holland where the morning clears the street brick to stone my love awaits his blonde hair ending in the sun; I see each time he clears the sink of dirty knives because his window faces west into my room.
Could he see me in that kitchen too? And a firefighter in the smoke gets the blessing from my mom. The government job is hot, never love someone on a visa; the sprites went flat after only two sips. I’m not allowed to sleep with any man my parents didn’t make space for in that big house, no matter how Dutch, with wings, or tulips on the bedside. Tonight I’ll dream alone in my brown bed, and in an alien I’ll hide everything that doesn’t fit in those Maspeth rooms, where my neighbors who don’t know my name know me fogging up the glass as a hand covers me in fingers from above.
12/28/2019 5:20AM