Mackenzie Junkin

Dark Wooden Staircases

You walk up the stairs to your hotel room--

You know,

years and years and

years ago, some craftsmen from Ireland sailed across an ocean

and knelt here, before you,

with thick planks of wood and boxes of nails and hammers in their hands,

and they built the stairs and the mantels

in this peeling-painted white hoouse on the street from across the park,

a block or two from the shore where the fishermen dock

and the tourist book dinner reservations.

I'm sure they built many things here,

other staircases and mantel in other two-story townhouses

whose electricity boxes are mounted behind their front doors.

Maybe a chair or some tables

in that café with the stained-glass windows

and multicolored lights.

A couple years before that,

they also helped build the Titanic.

It sunk only the year after

that white house with the peeling paint

and dark wooden staircases

opened as a small hotel.

I wonder if,

seven-hundred-and-forty kilometers from the Newfoundland shore

and an extra block or so from a house with peeling white paint,

there's some dark wooden half-rotten staircase in the Atlantic Ocean,

trailing algae and seaweed in the water

like the peering eye of some sea-sunk corpse

watching futilely for the light.

I wonder if a band of Irish craftsmen,

covered in sawdust and smelling like wood-stain,

ever sat in a bar years and years and

years from then, and got asked by a curious bartender

what the best thing they ever made was.

I wonder if they answered, "Well,

there was this one staircase..."

--and then you step past the windows onto the second floor.

Death and Car Rides

I hope death is like the car ride home from vacation when you were little. 

I hope everyone is tired, but happy--

to have traveled and to be done now

I hope you've known the music playing since before you can remember

that you can hear your dad singing along softly every few words

and your mom carefully adjusts the volume so you can hear it from the backseat

I hope there's blankets and pillows piled in beside you

you can sleep if you want

or you can just rest your eyes and listen to the soft conversation

maybe they share stories or murmur directions

but there's time for celebration and storytelling later

for now--

the colors are soft

the car is warm

your people are with you

you are loved

and when you finally arrive, carried gently upstairs and laid to sleep in familiar blankets

You will be home.

*Mackenzie Junkin '27 is an editor for Bridgework.