Calista Malone

This room leads to all other rooms which leads to only another inside. You are opening the doors with your bare toes and closing them all with your heels. You try scraping the white paint off the molding and find flecks underneath your nailbeds. 

There are so many knobs that turn either way, never locked and never going anywhere. You have collected the seaweed from the walls, furnished your hips with green and wet, trailing drops of salt water behind you as you go from room to room, hoping to feel the damp and remember the last time you were here or there or somewhere more specific. 

The monkey has been here for so long; he’s grown wings like a bird and occasionally caws at you in another language. He leads you from this room to that room and you wonder if his little yellow eyes see something you never will. Something other than the lint he fishes out of your dress pockets and the tiny bugs he picks from the floorboards. He nestles the dried bodies and spare fuzz into your hair. You think he’s making a crown for your birthday.  

About the Author

Calista Malone is a poet from the Florida Panhandle. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She has an MA from Auburn University and has poems featured in the Naugatuck River Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, Saw Palm, and other places.