Nul

Luca Scoppetta-Stern
The Yale Herald
Published in
2 min readFeb 1, 2019

for A.H.

i)

nothing stranger than looking through a curtained window

but yours

from where i stand across 23nd street

shuddering in the aubergine glow of dusk

has none

void

charcoal-smothered

like a pit in drooling silence

after the scream of flame subsides

ii)

the heat in my grandmother’s apartment

sputters sporadically

even when it’s been on all day

my mother says not to complain

we won’t be here forever

but i’m not complaining

i’m tacit

remembering how you used to look at me

when i told you out of the blue

not to worry about the sky

falling

we were three

now the sky is debris all around us

around me

my own words ringing sour as prophecy

in my ears

iii)

driving up the i-95

through new england

to tour colleges

a future-lottery

my father told a lie

like a vicious fissure riving solid earth

because somehow we knew

it was not a lie

it was prophecy

my mother got out of the car

and ran all the way to the rest stop

fugitive

but now it’s he who flees

now he steals away

back to a nether of unimagination

don’t you feel like you’re 18 again?

iv)

i’m 18

and i don’t feel like anything but forwards

though i do miss the mornings

when we’d take the M23 to school

our fathers in the row behind us and we’d look out the window craning fragile necks to take in

everything

Photograph/Hans Thoursie.

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