MILK & COCA COLA

When I grew up we bought milk in heavy

glass bottles and it wasn’t homogenized—

large blobs of cloudy fat swam in a bluish

liquid. Made me sick and once I dropped

a bottle in the staircase on my way to our

third-floor apartment and got yelled at, had

to pick up the shards and scour the steps, got

glass in my thumb and came home bleeding.

I was that girl. Bounced a lonely tennis ball

against the dirt-yellow tenement housing

wall, again and again. When a neighbor gave

me a glass of Coca Cola, I finished it in one

ecstatic swallow and loved its prickly taste

until I felt sick and had to go home. 

Where I grew up we had Finns who drank

too much homemade vodka and fought 

each other, knives up their sleeves. 

I saw them carry a bleeding man down

the street when I was ten. In my head

I hid words that much resembled drops

of blood mixed with broken glass and dirt.

PUBLISHED IN SLIPSTREAM PRESS