Today's poem is by Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong

Garage
       

One morning my mother laid her body across the driveway
to keep my father from backing out of the garage.
Her plan was to see if his desire to leave their life
could overcome any desire he had left
not to harm her. Of course, it couldn't.
I don't know if she believed this was love.

I remember thinking, as I watched from the doorway,
how her white shirt, grayed and yellowed
by sweat and age, looked suddenly pure
against the gravel, in the blank morning,

and how if it had all happened at night
it would have been easier, somehow, to bear.

In the garage: a punch bag designed to resemble
a man's upper body, stuck on a pole.
A red crate full of empty glass bottles
still smelling of sweet, rancid wine.

If shame is a place you step into sometimes
to empty forgetfulness into yourself in secret
or try to empty yourself of violence
like trying to empty a piano of its music

I understood both my mother
wanting to stay and my father
wanting to open its huge, steel doors,
to leave for good.

I understood whoever you choose to be
in love, the mother or the father,
it doesn't matter.

You will find yourself
in your front yard
under the bright, wrong light.

Copyright © 2025 Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong All rights reserved
from The Adroit Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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