literature

Safe

Deviation Actions

PerfumeRose's avatar
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Published:
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Literature Text

The usual items-televisions, radios, computers,
money we left lying around-
were all missing.

The obvious sort of missing,
as blatant as the crack in our door,
soulfully snapped,
which the thief needn't have even kicked in!
We had left the front windows ajar
in that Indian summer.

In the bedroom lay
a clean empty square, dust settled around it,
where the safe had been, resting
on the ground in the closet.

I imagine the thief opening it in evening light,
a night tiger at the river where he drinks alone,
lapping at the secrets of our precious lives.

I think of him pulling out the hard black gun
in its sinister pieces,
the silverware from Aunt Lori,
unused,
my father's class ring,
black stone, white gold, crest from the Midwestern
school which he abhorred,
the watch, passed down
and never worn
by my father or me, as if it could not take the sun,
as if time need never be rewound,
as if we should keep the hands-
seven past three-
in their place,
where they stopped, hell
probably back in the thirties.

But then
he would come to the photograph
some other woman took of you,
which, a decade old,
waits for my imminent fingers,
the Irish-drenched green of my irises grazing its gloss,
your hair wilder than even
you managed to be.

Would he look very closely
as he pulled it out,
a useless artifact
from the private museum of our lives?

I wonder if someday the thief, standing outside,
would remember this image of
you standing outside, arms raised
as if God could reach all the way down
to the sinewy tendrils
of the hungry East Alton
and save us all,

or anyone.
:iconthewrittenrevolution:
Does the ending seem too forced?
Overall feedback also welcomed and appreciated!
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