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Poem

Beneath a drop cloth
in the back of the mind
hums a machine—
gears oiled with old lullabies
and levers etched in looping script
you almost remember learning.
Turn the crank and out drifts a smell--
maybe floral, maybe musty, 
maybe something like
your grandmother’s books
just before snow.

Sometimes it spits out
something that never happened—
like a birthday party in a treehouse
you never had—
still, you can almost taste the cake.
Your fingers sticky with invention,
you don’t dare question it
lest it dissipate 
like steam in the air.

Once it offered the night lamp—
celluloid, pale blue clouds,
with Hey Diddle Diddle
painted around its spinning skirt.
You remember the cow,
maybe the fiddle,
but the cat has slipped away
and the spoon won’t answer
when you call its name.

Colors shift as the images fade—
red bleeds into rust,
blue dissolves into smoke.
Your sister’s dress—
once green, or maybe yellow—
now flickers like film
left too long in the sun.
Even voices warp:
your name stretching thin
in a voice not quite hers.

Eventually it stalls—
a cough, a whirr,
then only the sound
of your own breath in the dark.
You lift the drop cloth,
but there’s nothing to see—
just the ghost
of a spinning light,
still casting shadows
you almost recognize.

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