Raft
She made paper, pushed it into corners
of her room so she would remember
that space. The living room was best,
the dentil molding grasping pulp, window frames
cradling it. The kickplates on the front door,
their riveted topography. She pushed the pulp
against surfaces as if patching holes. The
marble tiles around the non-functional fireplace.
And that fireplace! The metal molded into cherubs
and acanthus, wheat stalks, the tiny praying
mantis on the bottom left like bumps
on the globe beneath fingertips.
I never asked her why she needed a raft.
I doubt she knew. Her hands so smooth
as they navigated the crusts of paper
growing daily. The parquet floors, their
crisscrossed network of rectangles. As the paper
dried, it took paint and stain with it. Patches
bloomed tan, light blue, green. The paper,
peeled away, overshadowed what she
had known that year, its landscape both
the geography of the room and the predictions
held in the lifelines crossing dried pulp.
ANDREA JANELLE DICKENS is originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains, lived for a decade in various places in Ohio including Dayton and Columbus, and now lives in the Sonoran Desert, where she resides among the sunshine and saguaro cacti. Her work has appeared in Ruminate, Thin Air, and The Wayfarer, among others. When not writing poems, she’s making pottery in her ceramics studio or tending hives of bees.
