Because Everything Is Not Sorrow

When Skylar closes the car door 

  and walks in front of the headlights 

    his summer skin is golden. 

      For now let me ignore how his shadow 

bruises the shed behind his mother’s house, 

the stone path’s sunk slabs choked by dandelion, 

trapped flight in the unused, rain-wrecked trampoline…

      There will be no death in this poem. 

    Or sadness. We’ve spent the night 

  cruising backroads, a blunt passed 

between us, planning out our lives 

bleared by smoke, the scent of tobacco and grape, 

weed, and the oaks winnowing along the road. We say:

forget Indiana’s cul-de-sac swimming pools 

  stain-glassed at sunset, the dust-mist, 

    the gravel-thunder of these county roads, 

      the backdoors we slink through 

as our families sleep or pretend to sleep, our mothers 

waiting in the quiet and the dark for the lock’s click. Kicked 

off shoes. Their sons safe return home. We talk in abstractions.

      We’ll be big. Important. Because for a moment

    we believe ourselves, believe we’re destined 

  to leave Indiana alive, as we return to the glow 

and hum of our town’s streetlamps, as I flick 

the blunt roach out of the window, swerving—the pavement shivering, 

its yellow teeth clattering—I don’t notice the state trooper parked 

behind the cemetery sign. But tonight, because everything is not sorrow, 

the cop does not switch on his lights. 

  Does not tail us home. For a little longer 

    lets us believe we’re more than bodies 

      built to break; if shot—we’d find organ and muscle 

drenched orange. Not blood but a bonfire.

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BROCK WILLIAM STOREY holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University. He is a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets College and University Prize. He currently resides in Carbondale, Illinois with his cat Raphael.

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