Welcome

You slowly creak the door open and

A volcano fizzes out of my chest

Like a blacksmith hunched over his grey anvil

The basement breathes a quiet "welcome"

(she's on my side tonight)

The far corner of it, drenched in a lightbulb's warm kiss

like the ones you stamped on my cheeks.

My mouth, though out of the question

(for that would be breaking every rule)

frames the intelligence of words coming and going,

lost and found, like the treasured jacket

lounging on the top of the heap,

Prince of lost and never found.

My crinkly blue jacket

is the third grade soccer player screaming

"Out-of-bounds!" every time a blade of grass is

swayed by black and white or a dirty sneaker.

It desperately wishes to wake your mother

But it's cries go unheard, as it is peeled to the carpet

For we are lost and found

in a huddled, quilted embrace.