When my cousin Simeon, a grown man, came upon me
sitting on the toilet in Aunt Myrna’s house
he paused to consider the child I was–
someone who would leave the door open:
not “ajar,” a teenage word; or “closed,”
an adult word; or “locked,” a cynic’s view.
He looked at me a long time.
My mother tells me now he was spoiled,
a boy given everything.
She thinks back on her duties and resentment
whirls in her mind’s bowl.

Simeon warned Don’t fall in, and it is true
I cleaved to the edge, tiny
for seven.