CAN YOU GET THE DOOR?

 

It was a Saturday in November

or December, one of those days

you wish the year would end or

maybe begin again. The door bell

rings and no one in the house

hears it but you. There’s a choir

of rings already in  your head.

When you open the door you

pray the woman in front of you

is not a friend of Jesus, not a second

cousin or even a best friend.

 

She stands in front of you, old

enough to be your mother. She’s

overweight, dark-skinned and

wearing a wig. If you passed her

in the street you would notice

the sky first or maybe how three

people were waiting at the bus-stop,

and you could make four.

 

You’re holding the door open

like you’re standing in a toll booth

on the New Jersey Turnpike. The woman

has flyers and you don’t have a dollar.

She’s the woman you remember was

on the evening news maybe a month

ago. Her son was killed and she begged

the airwaves for an end to the violence.

She has a handful of flyers and a heart full of grief.

But there is nothing but static in the neighborhood.

Nothing but death living behind every other door.

 

 

 

-  E. Ethelbert Miller

   September 5, 2016