ELEGY Poem: A DRIVE, by Emily Johnson

The ice cream ordered in January,

At a counter, making me doubt my memory,

Because why would an ice cream stand be open in the winter?

We had been in the car for an hour, he had asked me if I wanted to drive around and look at houses in rich neighborhoods

I already knew this game from the town where the women dropped their dirty clothes at my grandmother’s house for her to

Wash, press, and fold.

I had a Kiwanis Club scholarship, only partially covering the tuition of a class where I watched my professor cry about the fact of her mother dying

And a deformed thought said, this is a cost, me sitting here watching your ordinary humanity, the wounding truth

After that, a nervousness took root, and I could only outpace it

Dancing on unfinished wood floors, long splinters underfoot, kindling, drowning

The story goes- my great aunt was standing on table, unsteady for sloshing reason, hanging curtains

And she fell, never the same again

How’s that for hereditary?

Dying for adornment’s sake.