POETRY

These Shared Walls

a free-verse, storytelling poem

She handed me her baby.

I won’t take too long, she said.

I shuffled the baby to the couch, offered a musical toy and closed the door.

What is your name? I kept asking the baby whose words were “wow!” and “yay!”

She clapped her hands and petted the dog. Pulled the cat’s fur in two balled fists.

She coughed and cleared her tiny throat. She squealed with joy, told me hello.

I found cartoons for her. Watched the clock.

I glance up at the moon and note the falling temperatures, the passing of clouds across the night sky.

I watched her mother. Stumbling from her door, retrieving a bag from the car down below and talking on her phone.

She asks when he would be there. She struggles with giving the directions, with walking, with her doorknob.

She looked right past me, bleary-eyed, dazed.

I have to get back in to the baby, she says into the phone.

Two men arrive. This is the place, one of them says.

And now, with the shifting of doors and the mumbling of voices I worry about the baby, as I watch tv, shuffle around in my unicorn slippers in my neat and tidy space.

I contemplate making a call but worry over my own safety; my own smooth peace. There’s no real anonymity in making a call.

I think of that baby’s cough and the stench of weed and the permeable surface of these shared walls.

I can’t escape the empathetic roaring of my heart. I turn up the tv. Two ice cubes and soda in a glass, but I can’t taste the sweet over the bitterness of guilt.

The baby cries.

Thank you for reading this slice-of-life, storytelling poem. It is a bit outside my normal writing style. Lately I have been trying a few new things like this Pantoum and this metaphorical urban-esque poem.