Past blue tinted windows I gaze down at what could’ve been mine.

I see cars pass by in lines of red and yellow light,

Crisscrossing in streams of neon ambivalence and apathy.

Lonely little ants creaking in the cogs of the concrete construction projects,

Never done, never done.

Inside I smell the putrid stink of formaldehyde mixed with sullen mayonnaise,

Insulin,

I see the bed my mother laid in when she gave birth to me.

This is the hospital I was born in,

New Haven is the city I mark as my hometown on papers pushed at me like death certificates.

How often have I looked from this streaked windowsill in my dreams?

Or from my dad’s car passing under the hospital bridge overpass?

I’m not from here am I?

© 2016 Jared “I.J” Steinberg. All Rights Reserved.

#poetry