When the late bus came
everything looked different.
Same school,
same brick,
same flagpole,
same gym doors shut,
but emptier in a way
that made it seem
I’d stayed behind
after the day had been taken up.
A janitor rolled a mop bucket
down one hall.
Some girl laughed somewhere
I could not see.
Locker doors banged once,
then once again,
then not at all.
I sat by the window on the ride home.
Town went by in pieces.
Drugstore.
Bank.
The lot with junked cars.
A dog under a porch.
A field with three rolls of hay.
I remember thinking
it was possible to belong to a place
and still feel
just off from it
by one inch.