And the street held silence for two strangers who didn’t have to stay that way.
We stood silent below lamplight in the magnetic time.
Your suburban home stood parched in the dark and didn’t know me well.
Your mother stood at the northern window and pretended to be passing by.
The ten o’clock fireworks stood above the hotels and were heard in a tired sky.
Your roof stood parallel to that forgiving horizon.
Your car stood locking and unlocking as we collided.
We stood silent across from fire station number three then went around your block again.
And in that silence we don’t celebrate the ending we just end up walking other ways.
Source: The author, 2021
Russell Street was first published in The Continuist, May 10, 2020
Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. He studied English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, he is a MFA student at the University of South Carolina, studying poetry. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Feral Poetry, White Wall Review, The Bookends Review, and Echolocation Magazine.
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See all of Cole McInerney’s poems on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:
• The Buildings of the Dream
• Convenient Corner
• Lake Erie
• Russell Street
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