Wake

Standing at that doorway,

Several fleeting impressions gather at her feet:

The first was of a tooth and a piece of string

The second a beige boudoir shrouded in hairspray

She trampled over the first as its childish notions were shameful

She recalled hiding behind the doorframe and peering fearfully into the second.

But, not today and yesterday, and never again.

In the suit of black she and the rest were wearing.

That perpetual veil of hairspray had been lifted long before.

(once Roses husband had gone Rose had let herself go too)

And now she could enter those lurid pallid private quarters as often she liked.

And back again, tempted to remembering what had passed,

And hiding there, ignoring the constant actuality,

She bounded out into the sun and ran to her third,

the grapes draped on the trellis in the damp darkened courtyard.

Pausing still for a childs minute, eager to be as interested in it as the two old men were.

(they were so old then, but now in their old age, she realises their youth then)

With intrigue unattainable she skipped to the next;

The whirring of the laundry, the engorged stillness of the outhouse,

Far too domestic.

And so, to the next,

back inside to that darkened room,

the one placed aside for the alien children as herself

with the dusty toys kept kindly

the toys she had tampered with many times to many

it was the locked room in the doorways view that beckoned.