Schoolyard Years

Remembering
your foreign body
broken English
perforated fears,
awakening to walls
of cold graffiti
a stale coffee mug
in a cold pantry
from a boarding house,
called every sort
of name,
waterlogged
shipwrecked
or son of a drunk,
when the snow
reaches the mountain
you escape
with walking papers
to a tree house
by the river
like any runaway
from parental storms.