by Alec Montalvo
There used to be a mulch mound here.
From out my kitchen window,
I’d see teens coming into the clearing,
emerging from the brushes,
carrying snowboards under one arm,
brown paper bagged
bottles of booze in the opposite hand,
smack in the middle of summertime.
They’d get drunk and ride their boards
down the mulch pile.
It must’ve been two stories high.
Everything is different now.
Homes have sprouted up over the years,
my backyard mulch mound
is now a wall of hedges,
corrupting a ring of homes
and a five mile-per-hour road sign
posted throughout the filthy place.
Those kids must be older now.
I’m getting older now too.
I used to watch those kids leap
from the summit of the mound,
and fall into the line of the horizon.
They’d slip into that thin line,
into that gap of nothingness.
Those kids, like handwritten
letters
falling
into white envelopes,
lick-sealed,
stamped grey,
and sent on their way.
Now, I just see the tops of green hedges
drawing a rugged line across the sky.
Category: Poetry, SNHU Creative Writing