Kai Pretto

Coming Home

The cemetery is overwhelmed
by crickets, thousands of them clutched
to tombstones
with names not our ancestors.
We tiptoe as we pass, sure their mouths will maw open
and consume us whole, swarm of wings
and teeth and vulnerable flesh.
It does not matter that crickets
have no teeth. 

Everything is sinister:
The piano player across the street hammers
on the keys, a blurry monotone of too far away sound.
We walk back to the house through the static
of impending storms. 

We try to carry
no resentment for the laundromat,
one block before,
that caught fire last spring.
Its blind eyes x-ed out with wooden beams,
we run our fingers over the siding,
convinced we can still feel the warmth.

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Kai Pretto is a genderqueer, neurodivergent poet whose poetry vacillates between the deeply surreal and the uncomfortably grounded. They currently reside in Western Massachusetts and value a quirky sense of humor, thunderstorms and good boots.