SymMetrical

Sometimes I walk a dirty little line of truth And I track mud on every tile Of our little white kitchen We bought our sink from Fergusons and paid two wide almond eyed men To uproot our old, gold pipes and replace them With copper Which was cheaper And stronger And they christened our laten lined, Newly defined, Scrubbing Station With hand carved ivory bars And if our clean hands could touch the stars They would. And the impact would wash away the bleach and lye That burned our skin and made us cry But even so I could not hide My stoot filed soles My shoes had holes.

When I was growing up In my backyard There was an old plum tree Witness to the making of one house, many homes And the day before my sisters seventh birthday It died And men came to take it out of the ground When it was alive There was a swing attached to the tree That my sister and I would play on And on the days that we did You could see past the gate and over the wall That separated my neighbors From the river Which only ran on the days that it rained On the days it did not It stayed a sunken trench That cut a long line across the city Like the line down the center of your palm