Description:
You lugged it from the builder’s yard.
Now it’s my turn to know its stiff weight,
the slow chafe of pine against vertebrae:
a decade-long kiss, flush with splinters.
I closed it when I left. The lock snicked.
Then I noticed it hitching a ride. It never
gives up―patchy blue, invisible straps;
a faint knocking though nobody’s there.
So many slab hazards: repeated thumps
to my skull, brass hinges clouting strangers
as we creep into lifts, beds. I lie awake
on its panels, framing rectangular thoughts,
obsessed by the side I can't see; what grows
there. The problem is you died so there’s no way
to set the thing down, no wall to prop it against
with its stuck handle and fracturing paint.
All day we continue our back to front tango,
this dance where I almost but never arrive,
where I’m shut off to visitors for hours
then, with one touch, swing wildly open.
Andy Lee
