New Poetry by Celeste Oster

On Your Dead Brother’s Birthday

You will not go home.  You will walk

your adult self through your adult neighborhood 

and you will try not to notice the virginia creeper 

has turned the same blood red as your childhood home.  

You will have to think of it then, its red stained 

shingles, a matching fence more pike 

than picket.  Remember how it tore 

at clothes and tender flesh—the cost 

of your freedom so often stitches.  

How prettily your mid-century ranch sat, so

smug in its suburb with its crisp white trim, 

a blue Galaxie 500 in the drive, your proud mother

tending the flower box, so slim and pretty, so

well-meaning—the perfect heroine for 

your horror story.  How disappointing 

you were, you and your brother, screaming 

down her hallway past the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 

sliding messily into your own thorny lives. Even now, 

with shingles painted the softest cream and fence 

pickets blunted, something inside stirs.

That house will always haunt you.

- © Celeste Oster 2023

Celeste Oster’s poems have appeared in various publications including Thorny Locust, The Kansas City Star, Tiny Frights, and Potpourri. She lives in the Midwestern United States.