a place kept

i'd been scolded by an
ancient-faced teacher:
how was it i was always
running around the playground
untied, i was apt to
trip and get hurt, didn't your
mother teach you?

so i went home terrified
'how was your day?' she asked
'it was good.'

vincent - was a year older
and had a dark scowl and
who hand-picked me as
his target, sitting next to me
on the long bus ride, shouldering
me into the window and whispering,
'i will punch you'

so i went home terrified
'how was your day?' she asked
'it was good.'

i was the size of a toddler
in kindergarten, so my
classmates trampled me while
heading back from recess, a
teacher scooping me up,
'you need to be more mindful,'
she said

so i went home terrified
'how was your day?' she asked
'it was good.'

i'd entered a halloween costume
contest and lost to Michael -
whose parents were both doctors
and in my sullen defeat he'd said
to me, 'you had no chance.'

so i went home terrified
'how was your day?' she asked
'it was good.'

i'd laced up my sister's
ice skates and wobbled
across a back-woods pond
alone when my legs flung
out beneath me and the impact
of my back on ice ejected the
wind from me

so i went home terrified
'how was your day?' she asked
'it was good.'

i'd fallen in love with a girl
who'd be what i believed was
forever, until she sheared us apart
for another boy and i grieved
in my parent's car alone on the
side of the road

so i went home terrified
'how was your day?' she asked
'it was good.'

at home, she sat at the kitchen
table reading alone and i
made slow loops, down hallways,
through the living room, the dining
room, and back to the kitchen

each time she was there,
reading; she was quiet there,
mouthing the words to what she
read, but she was there,
and she would look up and
she would smile, there,
because she knew

and the world outside
was a place kept