Prompt for Hour Twelve – Text Prompt

Closets are a big deal inside a house, but also metaphorically. One can be in the closet, or come out of it, for example, But they are also places of safety and joy for small children, or where a monster is lurking, depending on the small child, and/or time of day.

There are very few poems about closets, but this is your chance to write one about the closet, metaphorical or physical or both.

 

The Stuff of her Life

 

After a year passed by, of your passing on.

(both of you passing on)

I steeled myself to open her steel almirah.

Expecting dusty sarees and musty smells,

expecting my heart to squeeze

the grief out of my eyes.

Oh, but I had to smile.

She was a hoarder, that one, your wife.

The things she had clung to, the stuff of her life.

 

There were letters you had written her,

all through the almost-sixty years of marriage.

I put them away, for your grand daughter

to find in my closet, after I am gone.

(Poor thing, what will she do with them?)

I found one you had written to the 18-year-old me.

(How did Ma have it?)

A dashing dude, dad, you could’ve done better,

It was incredibly dull, that letter.

I remembered well that strange last line.

“Don’t forget to drink Horlicks, hope all is fine?”

 

Well, what do you know father?

I have decided to obey you, almost forty years later.

I now drink Horlicks daily; it helps me sleep.

Thanks for the advice, I will not weep.