White Key

The night clicks by in thumbnails: moon
in the beech trunks, moon winking through slim bars,
you searching this morning, logging in to the history
of scenes that have already happened and will not
happen again.

The moon is small and perfectly cut.
Blinking between trees like the cursor
you used on your middle school blog.

And almost always you have this suspicion
that if you stepped into a dim room
and started to unzip your coat
you’d be blinded by warm mango light.

That’s how far you are from haunted. It doesn’t make sense,
but it is seventy degrees in December
and the moon is racing you neck-and-neck
against the dark on your way to the bus stop,

the dark like the day you walked
to the convenience store in September
when you were thirteen
and moved through the aisles touching blue
Windex bottles and expired moon pies
and wondered as you rarely did
if those things were sold in prison
and if not, then as his daughter, should you send them?

and the woman behind the register wanted to show you
the piano in the storage room, and held down one white key
with her index finger,
waiting, before she finally let it go.

A Moon in a Halo of Light Over Mountains in a Painting by Gerhard Richter

Once, my sister opened a palette
of brown eye shadow into the sink
and the porcelain became as cratered
and mosaic as the moon. We stood there
and guarded our work, saving it.

On earth, there are myths
that a life can somehow be lived
incorrectly but if you have ever been
to the Sawtooth Mountains
you will understand how in space
there is no direction, no better

way to interpret a dimension
than from wherever you believe
you begin.