The Bubble and the Door: a poem

The Bubble and the Door

After reading Keith Leonard’s poem Near the End in Ramshackle Ode

I float suspended
within a large soapy bubble reflecting rainbows
off its rounded surface and there’s an old
five-paneled wooden door in the back,
paint chipped and peeling, wedged open,
letting faded light filter in.

As long as I leave the bubble untouched I have
protection from the outside world and from
my mental illness but the moment I put my
hand through it, it pops.

That protection is so precarious — is it even real?
The rainbows dance to the breeze blowing, threatening
my fragile armor and the splattering that would result
if the bubble would burst, leaving me open
to the razors of the world and the swirling
dissolution of psychotic insanity.

The door is the access to my memory
and it’s closing. The more I try to keep the bubble
from bursting, the more the door closes.
If the bubble pops, will the frame of the door
collapse, my memory erased with the dropping,
the locking of latch against key?

Sometimes in daily life the required
minimum exhausts me. It seems surviving
and holding this bubble in today is making me
lose yesterday.

Because of my brain injuries I struggle
with memorization — I have a skeleton
memory, with shards of useless information rattling within
like the name of the car my sister and I drove when we were 16
my childhood farm address
and the number to the land line when I lived on Baldwin Avenue.

But I can’t remember books I’ve read,
people’s names I’ve met, products my company sells.
I must write down procedures and schedules
and reminders to scoop the kitty litter.
I have to keep a routine or I forget
to take my meds and exercise and shower.
My mind is fragile and resilient all at once.

A bubble and a door.
I feel inept from my memory loss but I look
at my writing and see something there — something
a person could call heart, call talent, a calling of sorts.

But is it just a rainbowed reflection
off the surface of the bubble I see? Am I left
reaching out to a mirrored wall of sticky residue
left on my fingers with only the air and a lingering
pop to show I even had any residence here on this earth?

And if the door shuts too far, is there
no way of reopening it? Will my memories then
be filled with only silence and darkness
to replace what evaporated behind the closed,
collapsed hinges?

TJSEP
1–1–23