Doors and Windows
Please leave unlocked
Your blue basement door
Or maybe
The attic window
It will be late tonight
Or perhaps early next morning
When I get to your house
If I make it at all.
All I need is one unlatched door
To get in.
I know you have yet
One unlocked opening
where I can still
Welcome myself in
Or better- my old key
still fits
at least that one door,
Though it's been years
since I was invited
to sit beside you,
And talk until 2 am .
I think I can still
Have that long conversation.
Please let me know
If some part of your heart
Forgotten and rooms below
Where you live now
remains unlatched
or unbarred by cardboard boxes
full of memory striking things
Like old matches still
with the potential to light
A blaze,
a seashell, a black and white photograph
of that forgotten summer,
a child's hand pressed in plaster
a pewter ring of a dragon's head
with eyes red glass,
all those things
the sound of my voice brings.
**************
It will be daylight
If you come at all.
There's always that door
unbarred and unlatched
floors below where I sleep-
The one your old key
Still works on.
I broke the seashells from that summer
And the cardboard boxes
are folded flat
So they don't take up
as much room.
The photos are faded or
burned brown by the sun
from when I left them out in the yard.
Now the faces have no edge
and aren't recognizable.
I don't recall the words
Of that conversation
Even the topic
Escapes my certainty.
That gap though,
welcomes a draft under the door
and I can never be
completely warm, the
curtains always stir
slightly, with the air.
That chance that you
may show at any time
inside my house
after using that key
Only you and I know you have.
That cold metal key-
the only thing that really fills that lock
That negative space
space filled with waiting
And nothing. A hole
If you will
Or a well run dry.