Level

Wrong turn off the bypass.

Same street.

The deck was still there. Gray

cedar, boards level

after four years of someone else's

weather.

Your father didn't speak

for three hours that August.

Handed me nails. Watched the bubble

sit centered in its little glass

like the one sure thing

between us.

Everything else split.

The lease, the dishes,

the way she said my name

toward the end.

But the joists held.

I sat in the car

on a street that isn't mine

and the wrong things

last.