The Closet*

[Brigid Briton]

For forty years, the dream crept back
into my defenseless sleeping mind,
just often enough to remind me not to forget
that I was missing some important message.

I’m walking through hallways lit by murky light,
peering into rooms I should remember,
searching for something…

I come to the door of a closet,
with an amethyst-colored glass doorknob
and I feel that prickly fear once more.

There’s something bad inside, I can feel it,
heavy and dark, trying to be quiet
so I will open the door and then…

Then, I don’t know, I never do,
never find out what it is,
only that it’s waiting there for me
to open that door and…

* I wrote this, inspired by the original photo from "What's in the Closet" in the altered photo section. Originally, the doorknob was amethyst-colored. I altered it to the raspberry color it is now.

[Fire Monkey]

I like the way you draw us to the question but dare to not answer it - what is in the closet, what do you fear, what can you neither remember nor forget? It is always tempting to answer every question but life often leaves us with mystery - both good and bad - and much as we are drawn to answers, some times it is best to leave the question open.

to quote a Chinese saying: "Do not seek an answer but rather seek to understand the question."

[SweetSilverBird]

Thank you, Brigid, for sharing that with us. It does evoke the imagery. It is unique for me to see poetry that could also be read as though it were a paragraph in a good spine chilling novel.

What makes poetry and what makes prose? I wonder if we all have our own definition, or if we are all creatures of our own eras. Interesting.