LET ME TELL YOU WHO YOU WERE

by Mallory Rodenberg

In that town where the adults
fashioned Virgin Mary grottoes
from half-buried tubs
while their kids fished the gutters
for half-burned smokes,
where nothing was wasted,
not even the abandoned granary,
which made good hiding
for teens who did not ruin
their boredom
learning to be useful,
let me tell you who you were—

You were a prayer spun out on gravel
while meteors whistled above
the endless fields that smelled
of tilled dirt and pig shit,
their only secret a scatter of thickets.
You were the marquee outside
the Brass Ring, flickering with moths
like the whiskey visions conjured
by the drunks inside.
You were clover
and a chain-link fence,
the late spring of snot
dried on your sleeve.
You were the empty search
under the car's dome light
for the right wires to cross
to spark alive your stupid heart,
and, breaking through the radio,
you were the static
that turned every picked-up song
into a false hope, then later,
a choice—

music or home.

Mallory Rodenberg is a workshop facilitator with the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College, and her work has previously appeared in Measure, The American Journal of Poetry, and LEON Literary Review. She is the recipient of the 2024 Levis Prize from Friends of Writers, and lives in Southern Indiana.