Liberties

I burned a hole in cloth, watching the threads   shrivel back like the stockinged legs of the wicked witch of the east, who leaves no path of return so you had better keep those shoes on   while you learn to grow up with your mistakes like good siblings: you will fight but make up    so many times that finally the stories themselves will hold you together—just don’t turn to check the facts, for too often they will have given you a choice, and then what do you plan to do   with all those shadows, the road leading back to where you first found the locations and faces that live in you    as names propped upright in the gloom, a museum    after the war, and the groundskeeper’s dead son playing   among their shapes as if in another world, his head far away and you too   only a child and not knowing whose memory   you’ve got there?