What the Children Know

Kids knock on doors
Finding ways into locked rooms
I know this ache

Rooms that were never meant for me
I made mine anyway
Through cracks, through silence, through staying

Smoke moves through the apartment like something unresolved
The children outside claim the stoop with noise and chalk and certainty
I watch from the window the way I used to watch for exits

Light comes through the blinds in strips
Not gentle, just persistent
Toast burning on the rack again

That smell
Charred edges and the morning still requiring something of me
I give it what I have

The children don't know yet what locked means
They only know the knock
That part I remember

That part I still do

--Vera