Neighbor with PTSD

We do not take him home

baked cookies; we do not

roll his emptied trash can

back from the street to his porch

We do not offer to loan him  

our trimmer or give him

our leftover mulch; we do not

invite him to go to our church

Once someone found out,

we got cautious, avoiding

the street that runs by his house

on our daily walks   We wonder

less about the junk he collects

in his yard and more about

how his wife died some months ago,

why the sheriff’s car is parked

in his driveway late at night

We are leery of the flag he raises

in his yard and anxious

on the days it isn’t raised

We speculate about what

the inside of his house looks like

whether he has art or pets or guns

if he keeps his bathrooms clean

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A retired literature and creative writing professor, Mary M. Brown lives in Anderson, Indiana. Her work appears on the Poetry Foundation and American Life in Poetry websites and recently in So It Goes, Dappled Things, Ekstasis, Stormwash II, Christian Century, and New Poetry from the Midwest. She is a former poetry editor of Flying Island.