Passages
A poem
The kid next door got an electric bass It’s been Dick Dale, approximately, for months notes crash through the wall licks of California surf Nightmares leak into shadows of fish, picked-clean bones littering the tide around my bed Memories filter swim in crevices sharing dark and day lost in the waking Dawn’s pulse heartens the light dims the crashing sea of dreams When I was a child, I cried at the bathroom door furious at the distance while my mother showered Now, a closed door, that aching misery, is mine to open
The ending caught me off guard. The image of the child crying outside the bathroom door transforms, years later, into the adult realizing that the same closed door is now theirs to open. Such a quiet way of showing how our earliest longings keep echoing through us. Beautifully understated.
So much here! The fish and the swimming, nightmares, approximately, and more. Reading it again and again.