-the great plan of 1952

let’s meet at my house.

It has to be early, before the streetlights warm-up.

once we're out there, once that happens,

the calling of our names will run through the open windows

and fall upon us like fatal stones.

they’ll see the playgrounds, the tarmacs of the schoolyards,

the meadow behind the billboards, and the dugouts,

all in a new kind of light,— a light that makes the world

a darker place.

the streetlights send them running to the windows.

I know your mothers as you know mine.

this will be different,— different than the inside chaos of daylight.

tonight, we won't have time to digest our suppers

and the tension will build inside their kitchens.

their eyes are menacingly half-lidded,

the dishes stacked with an increasing sense of agitation.

they'll know something's up. It's in their blood.

when their aprons are undone from the waistlines of their house-

working dresses with a disciplined, determined yank of the sash,

hung hard and fast to their hooks, when even the cats are scurrying

under our beds for cover, when our mothers have had enough

of our planned shenanigans, and when their windows are thrown open

with the strength of their common resolve bending their torsos into the darkness,
screaming our names through the streets where the incandescent amber

of the streetlights are warming-up; and when that happens, my friends,

that's it. we're done for.

quequechan