"If you've nothing nice to say, come sit with me"

I press chalk to the street and draw a door
made of blue oak and chicken bones, but
you only pour laughter from your lips and
scrape the knob away.
Heel toe, heel toe.

A mother calls in her child, with
a voice like the earth leashing the sun
and dragging her by the collar to the basement.
Peddlerman mutters something like “Hell
hath no fury--”
You interrupt, nodding, high-browed,
with “No, none at all.”

But all I can think, as I spray my longhand
over the walkway and side, is that
writing is like coming home to find the fish is dead.