Today's poem is by D. Nurkse

Refuge
       

That summer, the treaty was not renewed. Instead of the swallowed sighs of their lovemaking, late at night we heard our parents whispering. In August, they took us to visit the Shelter.

The elevator reeked of gym socks. We inched down, past kielbasa and jerk chicken, past the lobby and its tang of Murphy's Oil Soap, down past the basement and sub-basement.

That room had always been there, there without us—there in the mind? It held almost nothing. A dangling bulb half-heartedly painted red. A shelf. In the whorls of dust precise circles were inscribed. Had tins of provisions been stored there? A Tupperware dish. A plastic fork missing a central tine.

Would you be comfortable here? Our father mouthed the question but couldn't put breath behind it. In the silence we could hear our own pulse, faint at first, then maddening. The dimness was suffocating. With subtle signs—an eye roll, an eyebrow wriggle, a half-shrug—each parent tried to make it seem all the other's idea.

The elevator hauled us back toward homework and the Yankees. We punched each other blatantly. Suddenly we had impunity. You started it. We were innocent.

Now to live in two worlds at once. One public, soon to burn. One secret, hewn out of granite.

Copyright © 2025 D. Nurkse All rights reserved
from The Manhattan Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission