Spanish Midterm

We gather in a park, four of us each

with forties in hand, among the spray-

painted tree trunks, our voices strained

against the nearby 710 freeway. Jacob

and Romeo, home from deployment,

recount stories of near death in the darkness

of another world I can only imagine. Jorge,

a father in high school, tells us how last

night, over the phone, his girlfriend told

him he would be a father again and wanted

then, to say to her that she had dialed

the wrong number or hang up, because

he says, he may be too much a coward

to be twice a father at only twenty-one.

I have nothing to offer. Instead, I talk

of days in high school when we ditched

fifth period English and drove to Pedro

with pounds of carne asada and twelve

packs of Coronas, days when we knew

little except the city in which we lived.

As we drink, drink more, drink again,

I watch a dark hush begin to fill the 710,

fill the trees, watch it crawl over countless

cigarette butts, the tossed bottle of Cuervo,

the failed Spanish midterm resting beside

my foot, an exam some student dropped

on purpose, I suppose, because of the red

“F” on top, written with a carelessness

I can remember clearly because I too

have failed. Today, here with old friends

whose faces I barely recognize in the dim

light of dusk, I am filled with a darkness,

a desire, really, I suppose fills all four of us:

to carelessly, effortlessly, as if it were that

easy to abandon all our failures on the floor.