Jess Dutschmann

In the Summer and in the Fall

This one time I rode a bus to work
and saw a house being demolished.

The house was torn apart from the outside
like a man ripping his own face off.

The house didn’t bleed–the leaves
weren’t falling yet. It was August.

The house remains a caved in
sink in the neighborhood’s kitchen

into November. The leaves were russet
and gold and they fell into the core

of the house. I rode the bus to work and saw
the house bleeding colors into the rainy earth.

There became a jealousy, then, when I tried ending, alone:

I found I, too, needed others to half-break me,
leave me sitting wet and empty by the curb.

Jess Dutschmann is a writer from the NYC Metro area. She originally grew up in Bergen County, NJ, only to move into a log cabin in her teen years. She attended Ramapo College and earned a BA in Literature and a concentration in Creative Writing.