Nicholas Ritter

Plea for My Removal

After the storm, my father placed me
on the roof, or rather, demanded
I climb one ladder and then another. 

Too afraid to stand, I pressed my body
against the shingles, shredding my exposed knees.
I, still a child, crawled around like a child. 

He told me, “Get over to the gutter,”
and I must have. I hoped my legs, &
still soft hands would keep me balanced 

as my big head swung over the roof. My hands
shoveled wet leaves weather had begun
to decompose & tossed the mash off the edge. 

My eyes followed the falling leaves, sloshing
down onto my mother’s garden, separated from me
by our family’s home. There, a Japanese beetle 

landed on a leaf vining out from her rose bush
                                           —this hungry thing,
doing what it knows, ate away.

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Nicholas Ritter (he/him) is a poet currently in the MFA program at George Mason University. He is a fellow with Poetry Alive!, a program that teaches creative writing at juvenile detention centers in Northern Virginia. He is originally from the woods in Brandywine, Maryland, and now resides in NOVA.