Exclusion Zone Suitcase

Poem - by J. Syringa

The humans left many things behind:

They left their trinkets, their gewgaws, and their grim gimcracks.

They left their bagatelle baubles, 

So full of memories they bubbled up and ran over.

They left their poison, their disaster,

And they left their ruin

Before they, in turn, left too.

And when they went, 

Slowly, and then with bracing thunder

The magic returned.

Animals changed in terrible ways, true. 

There were new monsters 

To replace the now vacant.

From small opaline wings 

To hooves and wide pronged antlers.

Too many swollen eyes 

Blinded, rolling to the sky. 

Too many bloody mouths

Frothing warm pink puffs into the cold.

But limbs, misshapen and grasping

With souls too big and too young 

For their origami bodies,

Do not last long

Amongst the glittering, star sparkled air.

*

Invited by the city silence,

The unabashed symphony of birds,
And the hush of too few insects,

Magic opens the door

And politely, large guests are welcomed in.

A huge gray wolf stops and watches

A white bird that should not be

In a tree growing from out of a window.

Inside, punctured by darting shapes,

Frantic feathers stir up motes
In the sunlight filtering through
The patchwork ceiling

Equal parts arbor and arbor.

Birdsong beckons from the kitchen.

Here, where the light refracts strangely

Bouncing back sick and distended,

Creamy with dust,
From the bowl of a spoon, to a flowered tile, to

The piece of mirror reflecting curious yellow eyes.

Careful paws pad over broken glass,

Wet carpet once brown but now 

Green with sweet growing things,

And scattered moldering papers — fairy tales

That warned of exactly this.

*

In one room

Where the ghosts are thick and foreign

And the pale sheets 

Are still half-made on the bed,

A heavy piece of luggage

Lies fallen.

Discarded or perhaps forgotten.

Unlocked but still somehow closed.

The wolf regards this miracle,

Learning what she can

Of its trapped mysteries 

Through a cautious sniff.

The ghosts watch

Hungry and gaunt;

Wisps in the curtains

Untouched by any breeze.

These windows were left closed.

So the air will stay heavy in here

Until the plants can come home

And rest in their bed.

A triangular ear twitches.

Next, a whisker

As fur bristles and pupils constrict.

There are things inside. The wolf knows this

And it is true.
It would take only a brush.

The lightest push of a muzzle

To open this sideways trap.

But whatever is being held,
They are not her secrets.

Their story is over.

Hers is not.

The wolf knows better.

So she slides, fluid between banister shadows

Back out into rooms quietly being reclaimed 

By tiny pale flowers,

Leaving the starving ghosts to their cobwebs and rust.

This place belongs to the wilds again.

The wolf has what she needs.

        Pandora moves on.