Bloom in Reverse

Poem for a Troubled Room

13 PoeM foR a tRoUBLed RooM I’m working on a poem for your troubled room. It is, ingeniously called, “Poem for a Troubled Room.” Love, S. —from e-mail 1/9/07 She would never say: empty now, traces of almonds and ashes, burn marks in carpet, an old fusebox lined with asbestos. Or: five cracks in the ceiling, water damage, a door that opens but doesn’t close from slamming, closet with antique metal hinges, caked-on paint, the whole room a mud-slung brown that chokes the walls. She would never say the room was a reminder of him, the night he lay under the kitchen table, face down, chairs strewn and alcohol gone, three coherent words amid the howling: don’t go upstairs. She would never say upstairs he’d snapped: in his room, in one uncontrollable moment, he’d overturned his desk, flung papers and pens against the wall, toppled the bookcases, smashed his computer and printer, tore down the nude descending the staircase, then calmly descended the staircase himself to lie under the kitchen table. It wasn’t her style to say such things. She was less obvious, more lyrical, and knew the names of beautiful things to describe the trauma of such a room. She might say it was the kind of room where at first impatiens grew, 14 the walls covered with heart-shaped leaves climbing toward the light. But eventually, jewelweed, the crazy red and orange taking out everything in its path, a fury that could only be trumped by greenbrier, the thing that’s hardest to kill, what was never watered but somehow lived, until it choked on its own dark vines. She wanted to write a poem for my troubled room but never finished because she also lived in a troubled room, one with invisible cracks that spread to every dim corner, fissures, spider cracks that remind of the hand of an elderly aunt that reaches across the table to grab the arm of someone who wants to leave, the way she had wanted to leave, but was held back briefly, maybe a year longer than she’d intended. But each living hand had lost its grip, and she slipped away from the table when no one was looking, the walls of her troubled room collapsed, taking with them the floor, the staircase, and finally the house; every last thing that she wanted to say was gone. 15 The troubled room is now my head— empty, unwritten, traces of almonds and ashes, burn marks in carpet, dead vines. He is there and not. She is there and not. ...