If this closet had a window
you would see blackberries
still red and sour barely softening,
their seeds interrupting the little pleasure
they provide. If this closet
had a window you would see the door
of a mail truck sliding shut as clearly
as the sound of the crows that bounced
on the wires this morning and whitened
every one of the car’s windows.
In those days of windows and closets
your child knocked on the door
first polite and then insistent.
How many people get to say me me me
in any one family. When you lived
in the closet under the stairs
and your parents were still alive
you always had a stack of books
to hide in. Then the days stretched
in front of you while your Aunt’s
high voice echoed from the attic.
Once you took candle after candle
out of the closet and lit those candles
for all of your dead at once
having forgotten their dates.
In the cluttered kitchen
the lights shone remembrance
they shone the danger of remembering
the warning of open flames.
link to video
Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, and in Pleiades, About Place, Cutthroat, The Cincinnati Review, and Plume. They taught math in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.
