Everyday, another:
the mirror with its flat images
its bewilderment
its raucousness
and the memories
ill-formed, ill-fitting
quick to welcome the stranger
at the door:
the door as advent to the trailer park.
A wooden playground
with wooden figures
that move with your thoughts
like the tin figures
on a cardboard stage
from your sixth birthday
controlled by a magnet
at the end of a stick.
You stand in the landscape
of this year's youthful pout
waving a debit card
with the righteousness of Luther
ready to drive a nail
through your collected works
taking you back to the shadows
loitering in your dreams of high school.
How many times have you rechecked your voicemail?
How many times have you rewritten your opening line?
The ventriloquist dummy in your closet
threatens to share your secrets
with the neighborhood hooligans.
You live in the endpapers of books:
your memoirs will soon be published
by the local haberdashery
where a suit of armor waves at you from the window
as you pass -
the same suit of armor you coveted
through your teens
and photographed again and again:
the prints now somehow lost.
How could the clock have struck
so quickly, so loudly, so rudely?
Without warning?
Without so much as a smidgen of remorse?
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