visiting my parents after my dad puts up a MAGA sign

I propose to you at every roadkill
on our eight-hour drive to my parent’s house
my knee in the gravel of the shoulder,
gentle rot between us as cars hiss past.
as we cross the state line into Texas,
I tell you about the trees in my parents’ yard
my sibling and I used to climb barefoot
until we were covered in bark scraped skin
and our hair was leaf kissed and twiggy.
the best climbing tree was the Bradford Pear
in the front yard hit by lightning every Texas summer storm
and the bush growing underneath, cushioning
the fallen branches until they turned to dust.
our dad called the bush the Green Monster.
but my sibling and I called it the Green House
and we used the Green House to pretend the world
outside wasn’t real. laid inside its steeple
let sunlight drift in through its
stained glass of vines and leaves.
too soon, you pull onto my parent’s street.
I lean my head on your shoulder and I ask you
to stop at the entrance to the driveway. we get out
and I divorce you, there, in the driveway
next to the red and white sign, and we crawl
into the Green House together. the steeple is smaller
than I remember. you hold me tight, and I curl into you.
leaf tinted light flickers across your eyelashes
and I think of the dappled mare
the neighbours kept in their grey backyard.
I could only see her if I crawled to the other side
of the Green House where it met the chain-link fence
and her wet marble eyes looked down at me
through the chain-link, eyelashes quivering in the sunset