Yellow Rain Boots
Yellow rubber, swallowed by the wardrobe’s floor,
cracked wide across the instep where the plastic split.
They smell of wet rubber, mildew,
fear;
a pair of small boots, size twelve, seven years old,
caked in dried river-silt and salt.
A stranger may look in and call this precious,
a quiet snapshot of a girl who loved the rain
before her legs lengthened
and learned the art of running away.
How sweet to think I open up this closet to
reminisce an untouched girl leaping in the rain.
I never grew out of my yellow boots.
Perhaps I was torn out of them.
The monster does not have a face,
all rot and cold,
a mouth of shadows opening beneath the porch,
his heavy fingers smelling of damp earth and rust.
He never touched the boots; only the girl inside,
snapping her out of them like a bone from a joint,
leaving two empty hulls dropped flat upon the tile.
Each morning I reach into the dark for my coat,
and realize the closet is not where I hide the memory -
but where the monster wears my yellow rain boots,
waiting for me to slip my feet back in.
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