Slow, Shhh Closing the Door Against the Morning

Slow, Shhh

 Closing the Door Against the Morning

sometimes bookmarks are anything

we can set between the page, nail clippers, a hot cup of coffee,

a clicked open pen, set quick when a door blows slowly closed, 

closed, and creaks the way every haunt but one would want it to,

and getting up from here means losing

                                                                        my place, even though

i’ve saved it, and pulling the mostly shut door all the more shut, because

on the other side my son’s asleep, and his window’s open a bit,

and he wakes easy and too early.  and behind the next door i close,

because the boy’s pulls against the frame with slick silence,

my little girl, who woke

three hours ago to pee, and it’s hers that talks back a bit, hers i turn

the knob to, and i think there’s a certain luxury in the trust of

a closed door when i’m not the one behind it—because i sleep

with mine open,

when i sleep, always have

and think too of the three i’d known of fires we’d had in our old

house and all four of those bedroom doors gaped open and the absolute

slap my mother swung into fire safety’s face as a whole upstairs choked

with smoke.  i’ve never been in a house

that’s safely burning. 

have you?  feel the door, the pull away hot and suddenly all the drama

of shattering the glass with a sheet-covered fist, the sweep of all the jagged edges

and what’s gone through the cotton will be picked out later, all the way

up the arm and to the top of the little finger—

                                                                        see how far a noise

goes?  see how far back getting up to a closed door at 3:30 in the morning

can take a hand opening a book, reading one piece in it, but not,

and going back—through all that smoke—to touch a door that creaks—

it’s cold—go on—it’s cold—open it.