HERE SHE COMES

Cate Marvin

A city is not a house with limited doors
to hide behind, but rather a location with more
doors than it has houses, and there are many
houses and more doors to hide behind, more
windows to crawl out. The city has uneasy

directions, roads that refuse to collaborate
with maps. It does not have two stairways,
a front door and a back. If only the house
could tell the city what it knew, the tales
it breathed, the drawers her hands tore

through, pages she turned, private accounts
she memorized in order to master. In day,
she read my face, bargained with doors, traded
keys for tales. At night, the fields whistled
for her ghost. The city is unsuspecting

has harbored no accident, has prepared no
road block, has not denied her cable or phone
lines. Then what is to stop her from coming?

A door is a membrane, a window, a cloud.
The city has no attic in which I can hide.