Here is my entry to the 2017 West Roxbury Library poetry contest. The theme this year was Alone/Together.
Kyle
by
Nina
Kallen
I.
It is 1977.
It is the midwest.
It is seventh grade.
There is no anti-bullying
program.
Teachers believe that intervening
will only make matters worse.
I walk the halls in fear.
Home is no better.
I get excruciating headaches that
make me throw up.
I don’t know why it was Kyle in
my dream.
He was a mean boy, but not the
meanest.
He would join in
when others called me spesh
Or stepped on the back of my
shoes,
But he never started anything
himself.
In my dream there is a dance in
the school gym.
The bleachers are crowded.
Kyle and I are to be hanged.
The nooses are around our necks.
Then we are dangling but not
dead.
We look over at each other and I
understand.
We are the same.
He is as powerless as I am.
In that moment, in my dream, in
my life,
I stop hating.
II.
It is 2017.
It is the United States of
America.
I have not been a child for a
long time now.
It seems that the world has
devolved into good versus evil.
Stories of denied refugees and
the dying uninsured make my eyes well with tears.
I march! I write checks!
The view from the moral high
ground is excitement all around.
When I think of the other side I
think of Kyle in science class,
Sitting with his friends in the
row behind me,
Ranking losers and rating sluts.
I understand that decades can
change a person.
Life, and dreams, bring
unexpected compassion,
While compromises eat away at
good intentions.
Googling reveals a dead man,
Same name, same town,
But not him.
I doubt he is a customs agent,
Thrilled to be allowed finally to
terrorize random strangers.
Probably not a neo-Nazi,
Or an active hater of any sort.
But does he sit in his living
room,
Drinking beer and watching the
game with friends,
Nodding along at racial slurs
while he reaches for the chips?
Or, maybe in his dream,
He took the noose off his head.
Maybe then he turned to me,
And took my noose off mine.
Maybe he and I are still the
same,
Fighting free from our
entanglements.
