(c) 09/11/2021
An eight-foot stretch of green shag
flanked by celery-colored walls,
unadorned--no family photos,
no orchard or forest painted by Grandmother.
One brass and rubber doorstop.
The hallway was an in-between place.
The living room--
raucous with saxophone or drums,
bursting accusations of infidelity.
The kitchen--
no one cooking a decent meal.
We foraged: popcorn, licorice, soda.
For the grown-ups, beer.
Enough, and still a kind of scarcity--
war yelps and yells as we claimed our food.
From the kitchen past the bathroom
to Momma’s bedroom--
silence pervading like rotting onion.
If noise is living,
no one lived there.
Sometimes I saw it--
a shape like a woman
moving from obligation
to the bathroom
where water might
bring a husk back to life.
I always turned away,
looked over my shoulder--
red linoleum, yellow table--
out to the neighbor’s lilac
overhanging our fence.
There--
I saw the possibility of a way out
tenuous and so fragile
I was afraid for years to take it.
