The moon never made it to the one window,
where suburban houses nearly kissed and the sky
only slivered through. No bowls of fruit here either;
canned was cheaper and didn’t rot. Nothing to make
this memory pretty like other poet’s renderings or wrought
with symbolism in a daughter’s hands. No. Every night
we ate there, sometimes with my dad’s absence, and soon
enough, I learned to be gone, too. Not mom’s fault.
We had a loner’s need to be somewhere else all the time.
I never wanted to be the one waiting, looking up every time
a car drove by the house. Instead, I chose to be the one driving.
Christine E. Salvatore received her MFA from The University of New Orleans. She currently teaches literature and creative writing at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Egg Harbor Township High School, and in the MFA Program at Rosemont College. She is a Gerealdine R. Dodge Poet and her poetry has recently appeared or will appear in The Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Mead Journal,Prime Number Magazine and in The Edison Literary Review. Her poem, Betrayal, was a finalist in the Southeast Review’s 2014 Gearhart Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a 2005 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts.