What is it about the art of closed doors?
And all the reasons I just can't let them
be.

Like a deft breeze of defiance
that colors me stubborn, stupid
is just beyond every one,
always threatening
to blow them back open in
gusts of stinging fall if
I stare too long,
wondering
what could have been.

Willing away change that I
cannot accept,
I run around reckless,
slamming wide open doors,
anything new, that beckons quietly,
like I slammed them in
my mother's knowing face
when I was 13.
Crying myself ignorant
into a round, bare room.