In an already messy old house

I try to find a place to stash my anger

The beat-up old chest?

Grandma’s dresser?

Each place I go I feel your loss

The way a tall boy once held a short girl at arm’s length

As she beat at the air with rage and sorrow

Maybe it is the air that is the problem…

Not enough oxygen?

The matrix of maternal affection somehow dislodged by 

Something?

Something missing.

It is as though the lost girls had become those things-

A trunk, a cup, a worn blanket

Trapped in closets 

…in the minds of monsters

The old childhood nightmare turned on its head-

The child in the closet 

The mother, the monster

Shaking its imaginary head

“Even I could not 

Would not

Do something so unspeakable 

To a human child.”