Sunday, May 07, 2006

A Locked Cabinet (Press)

It sits staring blankly back at me,
old, slightly wobbly, and larger than I remembered.
Somewhere, sometime, in years long gone,
it sat in the drawing room,
relaxin in the corner, soaking up the light
peeking through half-closed blinds.
Someone moved it.
Now it continues to stare at, or almost
through me, from its new vantage point
at the bottom of the sweeping, or rather
"need to be swept" stairs.
It's out of place.
The entryway furniture was picked purposefully,
to match the paint on the walls and the
bland, if "tasteful," runner inching up those stairs,
it's all light, tan, almost the color of sand.
Not the cabinet.
Dark, cherry wood and at least a hundred years
old, it sits quietly, almost menacingly,
half-covered in shadows and dust.
It's locked.
It always has been.
I remember when I was young,
I made a game out of trying to
figure out what a cabinet that
I thought of as... almost majestic in it's mystery,
could contain.
Now though, all the old guessing games stop,
for I have the key.

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