POEM A DAY – July 18 – VANESSA SHIELDS

Closet

The doorless shared bedroom at the evil step-dad’s house had a long, wide closet. I went into it like it was my private apartment. A carpeted, one-room sanctuary, clothes-roofed, shoes pushed aside like bricks. I hauled in chapter books, markers, crayons, stickers, Hilroys in soft hued-yellows, blues. The pillow, heart-cased, from my top-bunk bed, a make-shift sofa. If I was lucky, Twizzlers licorice, Dipps chocolate covered granola bar, an apple. A deck of cards. I wrote rhyming poems, read, slept. Dreamt of kissing George Michael, and running away with the Rottweiler, (alone and whining in the unfinished basement. Wood shavings instead of roses beneath him). I’d close the door like it meant something, like I had the power to say no, to be invisible, to escape when he wasn’t looking, in the time between his lifted hand and when it dove down, hit our naked skin.