(after Richard Hugo)

It's cold-dark in the house
you know but will refuse
to return to, making
a map (your own)
of each polite intrusion,
each wretched kiss goodnight.
The knock on your bedroom
door and your constant
praying not to go deaf, not
to go blind, will not save
you. You fold your hands,
close your eyes.

This is so many years ago
that you have lost count
of how many times
you have been caught
in the interior, the red
door not a blessing
for wealth, but a bloodstain.

God doesn't give
a damn about girls
whose lips only murmur,
whose dirty feet and stubbed
toes are excuses for a life
half-lived. You remember
playing by the edge
of the sidewalk after it rained,
the cold streams of stormwater
pouring through your skin.
Nothing saves you.
Except yourself. Except
the bright bellows of
language, whose sentences
you have rigged up as sails.

Once, lightning struck a telephone
pole fifty feet from the house
that was never yours
and you remember the sear
of hot electric air, the loudness
that meant certain death.
Maybe you screamed.
Maybe you let your voice
rupture the ceiling of your
childhood home.

Years later, you ghost
and are ghosted, tell yourself
that you do not deserve
anything more than to be
shoved into that pink
bedroom of your girlhood
and made to shut up and sob.
You turn to the window, sing
a song about memories
that don't belong to you.
You claim nothing for yourself
except the facts of sorrow,
and a god (or mother) you wish
were someone else. Let
that sink in. Let all your past
be rocked by thunder, rattled
by hums of high voltage.