up ten stairs
through the bare wooden
door with no handle
and around the 180 degree
turn passed the small room
on the left and the attic
door on the right there
is a white door with an axe
mark just up and left from the
fading gold doorknob

on the left there is a big,
wide bed and on the right
a CRT tv sitting on a
flimsy wooden stand with a wooden
facade and broken plastic wheels
next to maybe sometimes an equally
flimsy corner-desk with similarly
broken wheels and ugly wooden facade

i can stand here whenever i please

in the middle of the room
with two windows facing
west raymond st
and maybe a 6 foot ceiling (if that)
a converted attic room with strange
stucko patterns scraped carelessly
on a ceiling that feels eternal

there is a large, wide, white bookshelf
in the middle
of the two windows where so far
all i have are two pictures inside
one manilla envelope
one of myself, wearing the vicksburg
bulldogs junior varsity soccer outfit
at 16 years old, young dumb and athletic
and the other of my two parents before
they hated one another
holding me in front of a tractor somewhere
my mother was pretty with big hair
my father had bleach white sneakers

the newest addition to the room sits
in the right windowsill
he looks black but in the sunlight you
can see that his dark fur is brown
he has big, loving green eyes
and although i used to come here to sit
and contemplate things and store away
memories in devoted silence

i now just sit with tiny

his purring so loud that it clicks
as he rubs his head against my arm
and licks me a few times
as he is happy to see me
frozen in time