Origins of the Back Bedroom
Could you trace the anatomy
of your lifelong bathtub
beneath you in the shower—
in steam and wetness
without looking
or
the exact curvature
of your father's bathtub
belly
by heart?
Interior decoration
from just earlier this decade
can look pitifully
dated
in the background
of home video footage.
Nonetheless—
from discarded mixtures
of Home Depot paint
could you match that carpeting
(whose gnarly hue
you loved so much)
the day it was stapled?
When the room in back was empty
and new
we invented games to fill it
and
once deserted
the room will reinvent us
and the way we smelled:
young and prime
in chemical newnessand primer.
I am a back bedroom as well—
where a pressboard Office Max
student desk pins
a carpet unchanging.
The doorknob is missing but
inside my father sneaks his smokes
and my child fingers cannot
access the foreign mechanism
locking me out
of my own body.