“Open and Closed Doors” & “To My Hand Scrawled Lines in the Hospital” by Matthew McGuirk
Open and Closed Doors
The door of my childhood home is now worn,
too many scratch marks from this dog or that one
before we put a hole right through the wall so they could go in and out.
Now the porch is more of a breezeway, no 4 seasons,
or even 3 about it
and I wonder how much else has changed.
The door of my first apartment still smells of
weed floating down from upstairs.
There’s a couple lost coins buried in the loose soil
where that kid got shot over a dime bag.
The door to my in-laws’ basement was once our front door,
when money was tight and it was convenient enough.
We didn’t lock it and they didn’t lock theirs,
but I wonder if they got sick of our cat sneaking up when
we went to the laundry room
or if I ate a slice too much of the pizza
when they invited us up.
The door of our house now is glass
because there’s a view…something we always wanted
and birds picking at scattered seeds around a feeder
and a lawn that needs cutting because there’s always
something more important to do.
To My Hand Scrawled Lines in the Hospital
You’re typed now and moved out,
making a home in this magazine or that one
and have an added http before your title,
but I think I liked you better back then:
written in rough handwriting
in a notebook with a couple curling pages
and the spiral binding catching on an overstuffed backpack;
the missing e, misspellings
and a scratching from a pen that wouldn’t
quite work.
The words that came quickly
even after 36 hours without sleep,
written in a pen and mind that
didn’t care about tired eyes anyways.
Comments