The Unclosed Door

How can I leave my open door unclosed

When the air beyond my house cannot be breathed?

What mask or shield can be interposed?

Through what pores can good from bad be sieved?

With no virtue but forgetting, I attempt

With hand on wound to beg outside from those

Whose voices fume with sulfurous contempt

For the every inch of skin that I expose.

I go, I choke, and hopeless I retreat.

To lie and gasp within the garden I have made.

There must be some other option than defeat.

Or else my garden’s purpose is betrayed.

With hand to throat I curl around the thought.

That because I must, I’ll do what I cannot.