Orion on a Friday

My weakness for boys with beautiful hair leads me...
to Orion. Star of stars, aged 5.
Five and three-quarters.
Bushy blond hair like his mother, who was born in the Ukraine,
growing out of radioactive weeds and familial dissent.
Like my mother’s mother, also Ukrainian.
Orion’s mother is American punk all the way.
Rough on the outside, having had to prove
a million different strengths,
She found a protector in another battered Slavic boy,
an American from Chicago.
Waltzing ink fantasies and writing each other a new story,
away from the neglect and dark days of their past.
They made a dancing chance of a boy,
with his father’s eyes / his mother’s blond curls.
Proof that so-called normal families aren’t always so,
and that misfits often make better parents than most.

Walking with Orion hand in hand in the brutal
late afternoon sun of a Friday,
down the Avenues 1st, A, B…passing bars,
wherein I made many a late night, bad decision
and questionable time.
Still can spot my battle scars in those neon signs
and dirty street corners.
Pushed Orion on the swings, he wanted to be barefoot,
just like me-
Amazing how a socialized city boy can talk to other kids
politely, succinctly, without fear.
I kept my voice quiet for most days when I was his age.
You had to be invited in, to hear it.
Still that way, to some degree…

Watched him descend the fire pole,
straight and twisting
both with glee,
enact pirate ship fantasies,
surfing adventures and intricate stories;
But still a small town boy,
living on the main drag of our neighborhood
where we will all watch over him,
his constellation forming piece by piece in summertime.

I’m happy to be one of his first crushes,
the subject of his brash verbal maneuvers, 
the boldness of boys the world over:
{“Listen to this, baby….”
“Who You Callin’ BABY?”
“I’m calling YOU Baby!”}
Interlocking with his running around with the confidence
of a General –
then turning back and looking for me, when he realizes
he ran too far.
Shouting “MI-MI!”…….  "MIIIIIIII-MIIIIIIIIII!” ---
since it’s time to show off for me again
in his ingenious head.

His mother’s getting a tattoo, not her first
and he understands and is only concerned with the playground
times coming to an end.
The early evening heat of dusk beating down on us,
as I help him to spin round and round,
forcing his own world to discombobulate:;:

God I loved spinning until dizzy anywhere
I could spin my body when a child.
That stuck with me too, creating other worlds
through the deconstruction of mine.
The idea of Normal seeming a non-existent word.

The worlds collide, as we walk away again,
back towards the avenue,
and the old places I would disengage myself upon
and give myself to
in dark rooms, over many whiskeys.
He’ll find out the way those games play out one day.

For now, my realities meeting as one, 
and he tries to kiss my arm again and again
like tiny butterflies;
being a boy he spits more than he should,
and having been a tomboy,
I wipe it right back on his shirt.
He should learn about the give and take principle early on.

We walk towards the mural of Joe, and I smile.
No one makes me feel like an innocent,
like an angry teenager with rage and hope,
like Joe-
“anger can be power, d’you know that you can use it?”
I think about why the ones who come here to this world
to tell us the truth never
are allowed to stick around for too long.
Double fire burning cannot last forever.
We walk past the colours of Joe
in his perfect state of energy, and shade,
towards Orion's mother,
now finished and ready to see the world again,
with a bit more strength,
innocence found now that symbols light her way...
And back home to Red Hook, to sleep
under our self-made stars.


~ M. Lucia