Bookcase

Bookcase
by Gabe Redel


In the corner
of my small room is a bookcase.
On it,
I have placed many different items.
Most of them are tools.
One shelf has a few cans of gas.
At the bottom are the remains of some explosions.
Perhaps many explosions.

Another has a picture of when I lived
in a room
with a flimsy gold headboard
that had white orbs with pink flowers at the crest.
And I had a large black box
with a Sharp TV from the 90s.

The headboard and box
had been donated to me.

Down the hall
was a fighter soon to become a bank robber
who once entered my room
and remembered a scenario he had planned
in which he could kill me
to get out of this life
that he no longer wanted to live.

I also have a forest
and a trail through the forest
that leads to my dream.

And flowers.
I've placed so many flowers
in that bookcase
that it seems as if I now have two gardens
in my home.

But also I have many dead moods
and many chases that ended with fire spilling from my mouth
and burns on my hands and feet
and too many promises that I made to myself
I believed I would definitely keep
but never could.

Now I go back
and question what it all means.
I live in those books
once again.

Sometimes I read the stories
that have been written on my skin
and in my joints
and on the scars of my face.
But mostly I just see me.

I see where I was
when I picked them up.
I close my eyes.

The fighter who believed he could find freedom
in my death was wrong.
He could have found what he wanted at that time.
But he had so many years ahead of him.
He got what he wanted
when he robbed that bank.

When I knew that he was thinking
that he could have gotten what he wanted
by killing me,
I was disgusted.

Today, seven years later,
I've listened to worse
from the mouths of better people
than when I heard the thought
flash through his mind.