The Room I Built by Leaving

Poem - The Room I Built by Leaving

I left the lamp on and the lamp became the room. I left the door open and the door became the yard. I left the word in my mouth and the word became the silence that holds the next word like a broom holds a hand.

This is the portrait I would not paint: my face turned slightly from the lens, my eyes on something you cannot see, something that was never mine to give you.

Look - the flag is behind me. The broom is in my hand. The mop is in my other hand. I am not looking at you.

I built a garden by removing every flower that begged for attention. What grew in the cleared soil was the attention itself, dark, patient, fibrous, alive.

I keep my eyes in my two hands now. I find there is nothing I can see but what I touch: this desk, this page, this quiet, this gone.

Thank you for the cowshit and the maggots. Thank you for the father who left and the father who was taken. Thank you for the note I did not play which is the heaviest note in the arrangement.

The room is dark on purpose. The silence is composed. The portrait knows it is a portrait and says so, and says so, and says so.

Nothing I can see but what I touch. Nothing I can hold but what goes away. Nothing I can build but the clearing where the next thing arrives, unsaid, unhurried, carrying its own small light.