Key Chains

Locked all the keys away.

Only little metal fingers with incomplete flesh

can fit perfectly into the tunnels

in the shape of riddle. Turn and

Clack. Solved the hardest question in life.

Slip back into my pocket, cling

to the unexposed skin with frozen heat

like a condensed winter. So closely linked –

But I haven’t hold onto something

warm for months, like his hands,

like my most delicate dress rarely worn,

always bathing under the sun in the balcony

at home, retaining a piece of tender fabric spring

for me; if I ever get to go back.

The patterns on my palms empty,

Stretching not into maps but webs of borders.

And I have to enter a room and stay in it

with a non-native address, pens like walking sticks

yet with no feet to return, roads only constructed

on lines of letters. The building,

a monster asleep; corridors: vessels empty.

And I lock myself in a room, a tiny isolated organ.

I sit here all day, fear that I might be drowned

by the blood of silence. Others like cells

transported to a pre-determined destination

in a sculptured posture. I have to duck into

my unread books to avoid their infectious health minds.

I can’t be the only one who is frightened

by the gate – the wall. Even shorter than me, yet taller

than my obedience. Metal pieces like fangs,

mouth tightly shut, never open, but on the inside

forever guzzling, grinding me into pieces of fear.

Shut me in. A room with only a tiny window,

reveals only a corner of blue, like a tailored mask

made out of sky, muffling the stars

at night. And I lie there, the grateful bed,

commanded praise, a shelter often rains, dreaming

an immigrating dream. But still some place empty,

out there, allow me to take a walk after refilling myself

with dinner and fruit still supplied. Yes, I carry too little,

too light to not bend to winds - for sometimes I stay

elsewhere for the night, just because keys

lose their way home too. They give me an extra one –

only one so I still weigh so little, little for I keep on walking

without a local night, without a train ticket,

and without a mom.

2022.5.4