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.