You Chose to Paint Your Room Purple
As a final act of mercy, your mother and your father,
Left garbage bags that held your entire life
Lying in the street instead of the dumpster.
When your coworker dropped you off after work,
You begged their voicemail to come and get you,
And like Cassandra, you had a vision of a future:
You spend thirty years trying to get your birth certificate and social security card,
Only to find out your parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their sleep,
They sold the family plots at the local cemetery. They want to be cremated.
They want their remains to be donated to a company in North Texas
That turns the ashes of the deceased into a copy of the KJV Bible .
They tell you all of this in a Will that is addressed to your mother’s sister
Who was eaten by a mountain lion on a hike in the Applachians a year ago.
And after you suffer through the memorial at the First Baptist church,
You wait for two hours at the bank, only to be told there’s nothing they can do.
Your name, the name you chose, the name you paid for with a month of doubles,
It is not the name listed at the end of the will; they left that name nothing.
Each of these visions rolls down your cheeks in the form of hot tears,
It is a hot and humid night at the tail end of summer. School will start soon.
Sweat beads on the small of your back. Your uniform reeks of cheese.
In all the plastic garbage bags they left for you, you have no clean clothes.
And then,
And then your coworker calls you back,
And yes, you can stay as long as you need.
And yes, you can use their washing machine,
And yes, their parents know, and they don’t care.
© CS Crowe
CS Crowe is a storyteller from the Southeastern United States with a love of nature and a passion for writing. He believes stories and poems are about getting there, not being there, and he enjoys those tales that take their time getting to the point.
The Loch Raven Review 