Yellow Room

A road follows me…
Lined with factories
it stretches
up from the cracked sidewalks
into a town
which has darkened in my mind
like an overexposed photograph

I will not enter this town
I knew these people
who grew up and old
around me
passing parts
of themselves
down to me
in slippery
childhood memories

On a corner block,
on a dead end street
was the house
where the sad faces
of my parents
estranged themselves
from each other,
and then from my life
as one of us
always kept
pacing the back porch
with restless footsteps
trying to go someplace else

Outside my window
was a tree of secrets
that I would fill
in the evenings with whispers
Over the windowsill
my dreams would drift
and feel the summer rain
tickle the pine needles
on each branch

I lay quietly
as the billowing sails
of yellow curtains
blew over my windowsill
forming butterfly patterns
out of the dark shadows
of the rain
that splashed themselves
against the yellow walls

In the blackness
of my yellow room
my childhood
remembers me
in a meadow
where I played
beyond the dead end streets
climbing over the high fence
with the locked gate

On windy days
I felt the colored reeds
blow through my hair
like ribbons..

I would imagine
what color the world was
so far away
beyond the yellow curtains
as the sun
would continually
wrap itself up
in white clouds
and disappear…

Downstairs
at midnight
the clock shook lose
a few seconds of its time
The dishes would rattle
in the tight kitchen cabinets
as the train whistle blew
through the empty dark rooms

Later on,
I would take
the shelter
of my parents’ house
and scatter it along
the roads without dead ends,
without cracked sidewalks
leading up to dilapidated factories

I would pack
the suitcase of my mind
with the yellow curtains
filled with rainy butterflies,
with the tree of secrets
whispering unknown places
I would race myself with the footsteps
always pacing the back porch
looking for another road
to walk along…

And I would lose
the road that follows me
on so many others,
but I would always find
the yellow room again
with its childhood magical key
hidden deep inside me,
unlocking itself
again
and
again

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