White Doors, by Tricia Marcella Cimera

White Doors, by Vilhelm Hammershoi (Denmark). 1905.

 
White Doors

My grandmother told me this story:
On her wedding night,
after the consummation,
she awakes to a rushing sound
through the house,
every door flying open.
She looks at my grandfather
sleeping like the dead
and wants to kill him,
the bastard.
She gets up and walks
through the house,
through the white doors --
opened by whom?
She takes a knife from
the drawer, puts it back,
hesitates.
Blood stains her thighs,
bruises bloom.
Someone stares at her
from a dark mirror, waits.
Then my grandmother slowly
closes each door,
returns to that narrow bed.

Tricia Marcella Cimera

This poem was written as part of the Ekphrastic Halloween surprise challenge.
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Tricia Marcella Cimera will forever be an obsessed reader and lover of words. Look for her work in these diverse places: Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Foliate Oak, Fox Adoption, Hedgerow, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones, Yellow Chair Review, and elsewhere.  She has a micro collection of water-themed poems called THE SEA AND A RIVER on the Origami Poems Project website.  Tricia believes there’s no place like her own backyard and has traveled the world (including Graceland).  She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois / in a town called St. Charles / by a river named Fox.