Now that the route was mine,
\nI could buy a new bike like his,
\nI thought, and imagined how I looked
\nas I climbed uphill wearing the bag<\/p>\n
a kind of uniform, with its broad
\norange band crossing my chest.
\nNobody watched from the windows
\nexcept the old woman in a bathrobe<\/p>\n
who called me into her dim room
\nto sit with her while she spread
\nher newspaper out on the table,
\npulling the small letters under<\/p>\n
the pool of her magnifying glass.
\nWhen she let me out at last
\nin the twilight, the houses were gone
\nto shadow. Was this the apartment<\/p>\n
my brother had shown me in the peeling
\ntriple-decker? Was this the right
\ntriple-decker? The man inside
\nwho shouted at his wife wouldn’t<\/p>\n
come to the door. And what was I to do
\nunder the streetlamp about the three
\nleftover newspapers in my bag
\nand the ache in my shoulder<\/p>\n
from carrying it, too young to understand
\nthe poverty and loneliness on that hill
\nof streets, or how what you thought
\nyou owned could own you.\n
Explore an earlier version of this poem through two\u00a0questions about craft.<\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n