Open Drawer

Brittany Deininger

Open Drawer | Susan Lichtman

Into the drawer went all of it—
fork and knife,
pack of batteries loose like beetles,
shame's tangle of snapped rubber bands,
what I didn’t say over the phone in decades
of blooming and broken branches,
what I sing only to myself and the dog,
two fruit flies carrying on in the kitchen
becoming legion,
the book of silences, cry of a girl-
child in my dream with no name.
What keeps opening the drawer a crack
in the night, just enough
to nick my hip, leave a mark?