The Cupboard, Again Poem by Fred Rik Kesner

"the cupboard again"


I keep thinking about that cupboard,
the way it clicked last night,
loud enough to make me stop
at the doorway wondering if

I'd left something inside
or if the house was settling again
the way it does when the temperature drops.

It's strange how a sound like that
can pull up a whole chain of things —
the evening I stood there trying not to cry,
the way the light hit the tiles,
the way I kept telling myself it didn't matter,
that nothing was waiting to spill out of me
even though it felt like something was pressing
right behind the ribs.

And now I'm thinking about how ridiculous it is
that a cupboard can make me remember
the exact colour of the kitchen at dusk,
or how I held my breath
as if that would keep everything still,
as if stillness was the only thing
I had any control over.

I don't know why it comes back like this,
in pieces,
in small warm shifts,
like the room is trying to tell me
it remembers more than I do.








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