September 13, 2016

each day is another doorway

She likes to joke about the foreign country of the suburban town
she’s lived in these last few years, how she’s just “visiting” even though
the postman keeps delivering her mail at this address. She says
she hasn’t quite dug her heels in, imagining this a temporary state
of affairs, as if her real life is somewhere else, however far and filmy.  
The truth is, though, her body took her here, the bones and muscles both,
her skin pliant and yielding, and each day is another doorway
she keeps entering, unflinchingly, as if she already knows
the gravel of this place matters less than the bedrock underneath, and deeper still,
the river of her heart, which always seems to fill the spaces in between.