The portraits are sleeping
in the shadows.
Pictures of people whose eyes are open,
but looking into dreams.
They are not dead, or
locked up behind their images.
I remember pounding on closed doors
as a child, afraid they would never open again.
That somehow I was drowning.
That I would disappear without their voices.
They knew where everything was.
Their arms were the invisible curvature
to my life.
These pictures are open.
The people in them are alive.
We talk to each other and smile.
When I frown or cry, they wait for me.
To live without them would make my life
empty.
Like being lost in a woods,
lost inside a panic,
until they call in the distance,
we are here, we are here,
and I live another day
comforted by their love.