Parks & Rec: A POEM

By: Isabella Salcedo

At pick-up, a kid walks into the front room slowly with blood slipping from his mouth. He split his lip on the gym floor. He will need stitches. I wait with him and clean as much as I can. When the shock and the blood slow, he asks to look in the mirror. I don’t let him. He yells at me and cries and I don’t let him look in the mirror. I tell him stories to distract him. He’s scared of the hospital.

We are watching Charlotte’s Web in the dark theater and the kids are excited because it all feels quite fancy. One hands me his cardboard Lunchables box and I take it. Is this trash? I whisper through the songs and the lights. A spider sings and braids on stage. He nods and pulls me close. I threw up in it. We tiptoe out of the theater to the front lobby. He does parkour outside while we wait for his mom.

In the local outdoor pool like every Tuesday this summer. All the camp kids splash their arms in the shallow end. I stand up to my waist in water. I don’t know what it is about a pool day that makes children’s noses leak for hours. One kid holds onto my arm and takes heavy breaths. He smiles up at me. He wipes all the snot off his lips onto my forearm and takes off again.

Isabella Salcedo is a poet from Virginia who is in constant search of silver linings. Her MFA Creative Writing thesis insists on love in the world post-everything: post-loss, lockdown, protesting, and grief. Her poetry can be read in the upcoming edition of Zaum and watched through UVA Today.