When I Become Your House
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- When I Become Your House
I'll shawl myself with wraparound porches,adorn my heights with a third-floor sunroom,let the wide view in through old diamond panes.
I will keep you safe from that high west windthat blows ticks off tomcats. I'll hollow dimspaces where babies can laugh in their sleep,
keep cards together for hearts, spread a hearthfor Red Pajamas Night, you'll all sleep close.Pencil birthday inch marks in my doorway,
paint over the scratches, like deep wood grain,from the hound's welcomes. Your champagne corks willdimple my ceilings each New Year's. But don't
think I'm your last harbor. I'll serve as youranchor for a few blest years, not beyond. [End Page 87]
TINA KELLEY's Rise Wildly came out in November from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise, and The Gospel of Galore, which won the Washington State Book Award. She coauthored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, and shared in a staff Pulitzer at The New York Times.
