There are places in your skeleton you do not speak fondly of.
Hide them in your closets,
like the mangos in your pantries,
let them rot.
You are not a bumblebee keeper
nor a farmer raised on road kill
so keep the nothing from your pantry,
unplug the refrigerator,
leave the kitchen to the dust
and the barn owls
and the field mice.
Hide your canned goods and caramel jams in the cellar.
Remind your mother where the keys are,
third drawer from the cookie jar,
never unlock it.
There are ghosts down there.
You must promise to never unlock it.
Swear to me you will swallow the key,
that you will never miss the school bus bell.
At show and tell you brought your whole family
dressed as dust mites.
The girl in the third row cried with her eyes closed,
she didn’t believe you that they were only rabbit bones.
On the way home you drank Kool-Aid
through the gap in your front teeth,
laughed at your father’s earring and necktie.
A ghost cross-dressed as your mother
threw herself at the interstate.
Your father hit the breaks like his first wife,
the truck hit your mother like his second.
You bit styrofoam and plastic as the airbags painted
the bucket seat red and chalky.
Thick like your lungs,
nervous like a stillbirth.
“You unlocked the doors,
didn’t you?
You spit the key out,
didn’t you?”
