Medicine Cabinets Crater

The bombing campaign was the truth.
I can’t tell my neighborhood from the Pur-Pur sand dune north of Trujillo in coastal Peru.

My one surviving neighbor palms her left earlobe as a game token,
a detached-flap-fleshy-game-token.

We shamble a block, mourning our career paths.
We try to recall our mama’s maiden names.

We almost tumble into a crater full of nothing but medicine cabinets.
Wounded folks from other school zones beat us to this spot.

Band-Aid wrappers, gauze,
stishovite, shocked quartz.

What if my one neighbor is hearing impaired? – I fear she is –
which means I was talking to myself back there — about my job & my mama.

She asks me too loudly why she’s seeing only
medicine cabinets — as if I can’t see them also.

It doesn’t matter how I respond — therefore I can’t lie.
“Beth,…BETH!! — our pre-fabricated homesteads were built the same summer,

featured the same recessed bathroom cabinetry.
What we’re witnessing here are the sole objects in our residences with dimensions

16-inches wide 21-inches deep 3-inch mirror glass thickness.
These medicine cabinets must weigh the precise weight required not to be

obliterated by whatever artillery the enemy chose to drop today.
They traveled high & landed well, reflective sides up.”

Before she fell in love,
my mama’s last name was Ballance – double l’s.