Unsealed
Cynthia Oliver
“No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child”
Victor Hugo
Head on knees arms clenching calves,
she pivots her face to the right and peeks.
The frayed carpet is snagged and thin,
her only mode of escape, the filmy window,
drains cold air and the rusted nails
are layered in tan stubbornness.
Stringy fingers curl the curtain’s lace in her palm
while outside nuns walk in gasps at the neon signs
and suits scurry quickly over spiked curbs.
Inside spiders sew webs to the leaky roof
above the hovering staleness.
The corner light beacons the slanted street,
tilts it’s interest in the sidewalk.
There are no children here,
the failing limbs of the forgotten swelter.
Ms. Mason’s poppies bloom and die cyclically,
wilting under whimpers, the capsuled seeds
swept into slick street hands cupped like
an anxious child.
She envies those to whom life denies only want,
seeing her sidewalk squares smeared.
Her mom sang about buying mockingbirds
but the rag doll with black thread eyes lays limp
on her bed, torn and sore on tired springs.
Drugged with frailty,
night envies her patience.
Petulant on the hard wood,
shuddering and cumbersome,
light struggles in flickers of bad wiring.
Drooped eyelids bring hunched shoulders
as she feels him cup the banister
like a young girl’s pale knee.
The stairs cry in creaks to her,
Disappear they beg.
