Ryler Dustin

Memorial Day

On my father’s street, branches of redbuds bend
with wind and the weight of new blossoms.
Pink petals tumble over pavement, broken bottles,
a streak of green antifreeze outside the liquor store.

Everything looks young, still wet from last night’s rain.
A teenage boy spoons ash on a church’s azaleas,
the scarlet flowers shaking like flame as he stoops
by the yellowed marquee. Praise the bright promise
of our country, it reads above an oily ditch.

At eighteen, my father ran away from home
into the tang of jet fuel and napalm. He tells me
only one story: how he fell asleep by Ha Long Bay
and woke with the sun stitched into his flesh.
His shoulders blistered and peeled for weeks,
leaving blood on the leaves where he walked.

Today we’ll drink beer in his kitchen
and I won’t press him for more—
how he got through the burn, the bullets,
the booby traps blooming like brief, blind stars

or why he freezes, hand on the fridge
as if afraid the past waits inside—
as if the dead and unsaid
might burst into brightness,
that waking of light when it’s opened.

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Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Ryler Dustin has represented Seattle on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam. His poems appear in places like American Life in Poetry, Gulf Coast and The Best of Iron Horse. "Memorial Day'' features in his forthcoming chapbook, Something Bright, available from Green Linden Press, and you can reach out to him via his website, rylerdustin.com.