lottery

beware of decoy hope. 
in high school there was a huge powerball jack pot.
on a billboard outside my boyfriend's house
i watched as workers added numbers 
to the winnings on the sign until it practically
stretched into the sky. offices bought tickets together
with a promise of splitting the prize.
my boyfriend, older than me, stopped every day
to pick a new number. held it between his fingers
like a ticket into a bright & shiny life. 
he had promised over & over that we were
going to get married. he bought me a ring 
with birds in the gem. at night i let them fly
so they could go feast on the stars. sometimes he would
take the numbers out just to look at them.
his parents' house was falling apart. mold on the wall.
a hole in the roof. his parents bought numbers too.
worshipped them. committed them to memory.
i asked him, "what if we don't win?" after an hour
of him counting our millions. he became furious
with me. his words have long turned into minnows
in my mind but i know he wanted me 
to believe in money as much as he did. i do not think
i was that much wiser than him i had just seen
how easily money came & left in my family. 
there were years when we had light-up shoes
& years when we shopped at the thrift store &
times the food ran out & all there was to eat was
the birds in the yard. still, i think of it more
like a wave than a god. after we all lost, we never
talked about it again. the numbers spilled 
into the night to become their unenchanted selves. 
it was a decoy. a false creature. i did not know where
to find hope back then. i thought i was going
to have to become this boy's perpetual watermelon.
i picked wild onions. the seasons walked all over us.
if you want to find hope you cannot look
just for a way out. when i left him i took the birds.