Pathos

A door opens.


I close it, gently. The dumb animal
of my heart, small rodent,
dithers and squeaks. It is afraid
one way or the other.


Let it be. A door
opens, another. Nothing but white
rooms, empty mazes, corners
to be backed into.


A million open doors, banging incessant,
the heckling gallery. The animal dreams
about shattering, becoming a shard of bone,
a bone knife.


Another white room. Let it be.


I sit at the center, or a center,
the doors fluttering like an eye.
White everywhere. The animal is a snake
or a crow or dead. White.


Nothing to be done. Nothing to bite
or cut. The doors laugh and fall away;
in the unbroken white, my heart
shakes and shakes.