Is there?
By Marvin Alexis

Tattoos between His bony knuckles,
His hands peeking through the gates
Sitting on clouds of smog; watching…

I’m a sucker for dark alleys
My city’s capillaries
Creases in my grandparents’ palms
The perpetual tunnel in his eyes waiting for the answer
My furrowed forehead as I try to find it

He sits there on His crown with His head hunched over towards the ground
In deep thought
As she walks over and plucks the syringe from His vein
He doesn’t even twitch
She kneels in front of him, whispers something
But He isn’t interested in hearing anything
So she makes her way to the restroom
Leaving Him to stare at the ground
As always, watching
But He couldn’t see us through the smog.

So we stood in that dark alley
Staring at the chalk outline where my childhood died
he reaches into his pockets and hands me a box of colored chalk
We split the contents and dissect the body, carving numbers
into the ground where the head, chest, arms, and legs were.
he went first, and I watched, forgetting the question, until it was my turn.
I was reluctant, but really I wasn’t any older than the boy myself.
It takes more than pubic hair to become a man
so I bounced across the gridded expanse.

She brings all the ingredients
Pure, a full carton, and the only thing He’s ever given her
she waits in her usual stall for them to come
It’s not long before He arrives
The stall door creaks open and she takes a bump
then slumps down onto the toilet seat, disappointed
to see Him here again
He cups her jaw in His hand, squeezing her cheeks together
and lifts her, she turns and faces the wall behind her
Clutching her wings, He proceeds.
She screams,
but He’s not interested in hearing anything

We stopped long after we tired
Long after our soles had rubbed away the numbers
…and the remains.
I remember being told as a child
That angels once lived here
In every dark alley, there was an angel
Watching over
I told him that, like my father told me
And watched those tunnels in his eyes
Fill in with something I couldn’t decipher
As he repeated my answer over and over
“Yes…Yes…Yes…”

He rips the wings off, flesh on her back exposed
She asks Him the question
He doesn’t answer until he’s almost walked completely away
“No.”
So she stayed there, on her knees, whispering to herself
Because no one else was ever listening.