On my way up the stairs
carrying a cardboard box
of old books, bad poems
and overdue bills heavy
in my hands, not thinking
between steps, moving,
on my way up the stairs
remembering slowly, not thinking
that on my way up the stairs
i carry coat hangers, cockroaches,
an ex-wife, a hot plate, werewolves,
toys and old landladies.
three years now
on my way up the stairs
eight or nine rooms in
three years
one month in a closet
three weeks
in a '49 Plymouth and
god, nothing in here is so
immediate as what pain is.
there's much less to move
than remember.
on my way up the stairs
is the same as now
is 19 ways to forget
this is climbing and could
have come two rooms back in time.
on my way up the stairs
carrying a few letters, two pair of shoes,
an armful of clothes and what happens
is swift, irrevocable, between
steps, not thinking, in suddenly
like a snapshot falling
from the pages of a book,
a memory, i see it
on my way up the stairs,
the brilliance of finding
on my way up the stairs
a thing lost, a memory flashing
and fading and fading
is a picture of a picture of
my daughter forgotten in a closet ago
on my way up the stairs
i keep falling from these pages
captured and posing, in this
yellow faded place
on my way up, etc.
to be read aloud in the cadence of climbing stairs
