Find The Missing Piece

by Gerald Yelle

We checked the corner where we knew they kept
the game. We looked on all the shelves
in the cabinets and closets and under the sink
–then we went and found it at our house 
under the covers where kids had been
playing it for hundreds of years. 
They warned us to stay out of the narrow 
passage when we played it –but that was the place 
we felt most excited and alive. Sometimes 
we whispered about it –there was no 
way to say it aloud. Someone said we should 
throw a tantrum. At first we felt it was best 	
not to, but then we got loud and noticed 
it was fun. The whole neighborhood heard  
the ruckus and wanted in on it. We ended up 
changing the rules to accommodate 
them all. We used the breakdown lane to get
around the traffic and pull into Cumby’s
with a line of police cars behind us.  
We told them we had a bathroom emergency.  
They said we looked like a bathroom emergency.
We could tell they knew we lied.

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Gerald Yelle’s books include “The Holyoke Diaries,” “Mark My Word and the New World Order,” and “Dreaming Alone and with Others.” His chapbooks include “No Place I Would Rather Be,” and “A Box of Rooms.” He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a member of the Florence Poets Society.