As boys we stole down 26th Street to Dean's 
and loaded up our pockets with Fireballs 
and Bazooka. We filled our guts with Slurpees, 
pored over every aisle as though the first time
before retiring, belly-sick, to the front stoop,
where we flipped baseball cards and murdered
our teeth with the sugary haul. We'd stay 
past dusk, refuse to shiver no matter how cold 
it got, squinting to see who'd won which player
in the dull burn of Dean's single, skinny lamp
eking light through the front store window.
It was this way with us for years,
for as long as our mother and father
shared a home, the two of them penned
like mongrels, clawing at each other 
for dominance. Instead of the snarling we lost ourselves
inside the racks of candy and comics,
the ice cream case busting with Nutty Buddies 
and Push-Ups, and whatever else we could get
our filthy hands on.  Dean didn't care
if we didn't always buy, and sometimes
doled out chocolate like soldiers to native punks.
We thanked him for these gifts, this foreign place
that wasn't home no matter that we lived there.
Many years later, long after our parents 
called it quits and my brother and I 
made new lives with wives and kids of our own,
long after some dog-tired stranger
fell foolishly through Dean's front door mid-April
and stabbed him in the throat, killed him
for whatever chump change he might have had,
I still spin by the spot where us brothers flipped cards,
eyeball the polished signpost out front
that now announces Wolf & Son Insurance,
a place you can go for protection
from fire and flood, accidental death,
or policies for extra life.

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