content warning: discussion of suicide
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A locked door can mean that: no one is home
A locked door can mean that: someone is suffering in silence
A locked door can mean that: a mother is nursing her infant
A locked door can mean that: a mother has nothing left to give
A locked door can mean that: you are not welcome
A locked door can mean that: girls are conjuring ghosts
A locked door can mean that: a whole family is home, together, safe
A locked door can mean that: he is looking up how to shoot a pistol on YouTube
A locked door can mean that: he is writing his suicide note
A locked door can mean that: he will go through with it
A locked door can mean that: we will never see him alive again
A locked door can mean that: we won’t get to him in time
A locked door can mean that: he did not want to be saved
An open door: in my dream, the night that he dies. At the end of a forest
trail. It is swung wide open, onto a cottage full of light.
His footsteps sound lighter than before. His laughter:
1,000 bells, unbound.
When I wake in the morning, I take the doors in my house
off the hinges. Now, when the girls conjure their ghosts
maybe he will find me.
Joan Kwon Glass, author of “How to Make Pancakes For a Dead Boy” (Harbor Editions, 2022) was a finalist in the 2021 Lumiere Review Writing Contest, and serves as Poet Laureate (2021-2025) for the city of Milford, CT. She is a biracial Korean American who holds a B.A. & M.A.T. from Smith College, is Poetry Co-Editor for West Trestle Review & Poetry Reader for Rogue Agent. Her poems have recently been published or are forthcoming in trampset, Rust & Moth, Rattle, Mom Egg, SWWIM, Honey Literary, Lumiere Review, Lantern Review, Literary Mama, Barnstorm & others. Since 2018, Joan has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. She tweets @joanpglass & you may read her previously published work at www.joankwonglass.com.
photo by Annie Spratt (via unsplash)
Crow & Cross Keys 