Emmy Appleseed

and the police lights dot the highway sway from side to side

outside my apartment a man is getting arrested

yes he is Mexican

and the lights are flashing bright red blue on my knuckles clawing the wheel like a catatonic psych cat and they churn through my eyes until the nausea comes and welcomes the asphalt like a surprise like you meant it to be with the lights off and everybody called your name but it was the wrong name but you didn’t care because you were drunk and you hated your name anyway.

and the cuffs are clinching his wrists and he’s aching in the cab of the car, and the men in hats are telling him his sentence and he’s fading into hard.

and the radio’s fallen into the dash and you think that wouldn’t be a problem but you were crying so hard that you pushed and it fell and you think it’s only one more thing you’ll have to fix but you don’t have the tools

and in the car next to you somebody’s crying. and in the window next to the car, is you  and you are crying and you are somebody and somebody is crying and nobody can fix it and it’s not second grade and timeout’s for professional basketball players and you’re nowhere near tall enough to play and no one ever picked you first anyway 

and you can hear somebody screaming and you look and it’s not the flashing lights blue blue red and the Mexican with his hands on his head and the cops might not even be racist  and he might be Guatemalan and if he was, would it still be racism and you don’t care because somebody is screaming and they’re not making sense

they’re yelling in circles and the radio’s fallen into the dash and it’s still playing soft like it’s muffled or broke.