In the Patio IV (Black Door)
                Georgia O'Keeffe [Abiquiu House Courtyard; 1950]

Carried inside me
long as I can remember,
a child's drawing of a door:

four lines, none plumb,
pressed into an adobe wall
of thumb-smudged pink.

Now here—after how many
years of rendering interior
exterior so that others

might see—
the world has made one
for me. A door

is everything a painting
wants to be. Portal, promise.
I was afraid it was perfect

only so long as I did not
enter it. But in the painting
I do not paint, I lie, knees propped

to either side of the jamb,
sill bisecting me right
as a spine—each crack

vertebra matched: perfectly
in, perfectly out—
to both worlds, peripheral.

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Copyright © 2017 Jessica Jacobs All rights reserved
from Cave Wall
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission