Athena Tan

THE PAINTERS LEFT MARKS 

two nights ago             I fell asleep

when I                                   awoke the next morning,

two men

were at the window,    in the morning until afternoon.

 

I thought to myself

monsters don’t knock on the door,

burglars don’t ring the door-bell,

exterminators of the flowers (growing inside of all of us, hungry for strange things)

don’t ever drop by,

announced.

 

a tapping                     on the window,

heralded the visit

of these two men.

I thought to myself

to scream for help!

remembered my mother and her portable body-alarm—

–not to tell her to wake up, but to tell her

when to run—

and my friend who taught herself

how to move with          a butcher’s knife

when the moon was up, because

she was scared for her brother and her own

being.

 

I didn’t move               to do anything but

pull the blankets up,

over my head,

wishing that they would leave

but the tapping            it continued

and the sunshine in the morning

stroked our faces all the same,

I told myself

that robberies              do not occur in broad daylight

and consequently refused to look out the window again.

 

everything                   swirled

as they dipped             their  brushes

 

and I think I might have screamed

but the two men were only there

to paint the building.

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Featured Image | Taken + Edited by Me

© athenatjx

a/n: experimental poetry