NaPoWriMo - My one and Only Poem for 2024, Inspired by a Recent Event and A bit of Trauma

Friday, April 26, 2024

 

As he ran away from my house

After he tried to open the locked basement door

After I heard a racket and went out on the deck to investigate, thinking the kerfuffle was from curious racoons stealing from full bird feeders

After scolding myself once more for not going to Olive’s soccer game

After sitting down with the most complex knitting pattern I’ve ever attempted and falling deep into concentrated counting of the scattered arrays of purple purls and white knits,

I yelled at him.


Hey, what are you doing? I yelled as he sprinted from underneath the deck toward the creek.

Do you need something? I yelled as he changed direction and sprinted across the field toward my sisters’ houses.


I whispered to myself.  Mostly curse words.

What in the hell? I whispered as I bolted for my car.

Son of a bitch. I whispered as I scanned the field and road for sight of him.

(This, incidentally, is the first and last curse I ever heard from my mother, intensely whispered as another car ran a light and almost plowed into our children-filled, fake-wood-covered-panel station wagon.)

What in the actual fuck? I whispered to myself as my brave sister and I scanned around her house and she checked for him in her garage and locked the door behind her.


I spoke calmly

As I called the sheriff’s office, my second sister, my nephew

As I hugged Harry, and told him it was not his fault, as he was in the front yard and the intruder came from the back yard, from the fields surrounding us, through the creek, and that he was still the goodest boy.  Harry, not the intruder, but you knew that, didn’t you?


I told myself

That this was an isolated incident

That this man didn’t come looking for me

That he was probably looking for something to steal

That he would have found nothing of value to him in our basement, it being filled with boxes of holiday decorations and old furniture someone might need someday and toys I just can’t part with and canning jars

That if the door had been unlocked and he was angry at not finding anything worthy of stealing he would have come upstairs and Harry would not have stopped him with his goofy happy face and furious bark because he was in the front yard and still the bestest boy and

Worst case scenario.


I whisper to myself

And list the things he did steal

 – the peace I cherish in this house that no burning candle, or burning sage or burning stick of palo santo has yet to return

- the comfort of sitting on the couch under a quilt with a book or a good BBC crime drama or a piece of knitting without constantly glancing right, toward the French doors, expecting someone I’ve never seen before to be there,  pulling pushing pulling pushing on the door lever

- the tranquility of waking up in the middle of the night in this warm and quiet and dark house, and going back to sleep surrounded by love and too many pillows on the bed

– the pluck I’ve developed through all the years of Clay’s travels, to be able to stay by myself, do for and by myself

– the joy of open doors, open windows, open garage, letting in the spring and the warmth and the robins who are determined to build their nest in the garage.


And I know

if he had asked, I would have given him a sandwich or a twenty or a box of Christmas decorations. 


Peace

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