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AT THE MARJEANETTE APARTMENTS
Skinny-legged girl in droopy socks
and loose underpants—curling-rags
screwing her red hair in knots—Amelia-Anne
stands tiptoe on a stool to reach
the doll's house on the top shelf of the closet
Pounding with a hammer too heavy
for her brittle wrists,
she is nailing the house door shut.
After a day of dodging the rain
between soured park-shelters,
I returned to my apartment. The key
jammed in the lock. I tried
the other door; easily it swung
open on the living room, where old ladies
sagged on the grey sofas, the white
haloes of their hair blued
by the flickering television screen.
"I've come for my things," I said.
Their ivory knuckles tightened on their canes
I had been there only that morning,
yet long before their time
and their urinous stink of tea-leaves.
One creaked from her seat
and shuffled to the bedroom door.
"In here," she said. And I eased myself in
between the crowded, dark and oily furniture—
yellowed lace on the tables,
bleached wax fruit in smoky bowls,
a wasp's nest disintegrating on the pillow.
Things were not as I had recalled.
On my wardrobe door hung my uniform—
the buttons crusted with verdigris, the crimson
lapels opening to a fog of moths.
In the mirror my face was a milky smear.
When I turn to help the little girl—
her eyes the color of cornflowers—
by lifting the heavy doll's house down,
its frail walls collapse. Its rooms
are clogged with loam.
   
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