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Youth is the threshold to a house 

          that does not want to settle

the frame we cling to when the soul quakes like tortured earth 

          and the future is fear of storm’s approach

 

Chalky powdered reminiscences clog well-worn hinges

          and regrets expand like caulking in the cracks

I bend deep to examine my life’s baseboards

          and can hear my regrets cracking

 

The past rasps and grates in my throat

          as I hack to clear the phlegm of sins best forgotten

Memories gray and retreat like thinning hair

          they are the shirts that still carry the scent of the departed

 

Lessons cling to hands and fingers scrubbed raw

           by repentant nails chewed to bleeding

Shall I stand hesitant upon that doorstep

          a vampire pressing for permission to pass

 

I slough off scarlet skin carried in from laughed-off longings

          and slap squandered time and tarnish from recycled sneaker soles

I do not shrink from the creak in Future’s floorboards

          for golden is the light upon them at both rise and set of sun

 

I will not fear to make my bed in this place

          for Now is the home that I own

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Published by Synkroniciti Magazine Vol. 5, No. 4, Katherine McDaniel, editor