We three moved to the city–
I liked golden shag rug, clean white

walls, square bedroom to myself
that shut out sounds of a new place
and trouble I found in line after gym
(she kept nudging, named me
Vanilla, so I stared hard, whispered,
“Chocolate bar!” and was called
on a different kind of carpet,
not golden, not soft).

Just when I learned my times tables
we went back; the house and our things
were gone (I remember no talk of it)

and we lived in a trailer, its linoleum
golden brown—meantime, they topped
soot-covered stones with plywood,

raised studs, put sheetrock in place
(after Scribner and Sons, men with
tattoos and nipple rings ran wires,
smashed cigarette butts into mom’s

used-to-be pink petunia garden).
All the while they were spackling,
cementing, whitewashing walls,
sister had begun collecting the mail

for a couple who lived half mile up our
straight dirt road. Bills, letters, ivory-
backed bird book with the prettiest
cardinals, jays, sparrows– a guide–
until someone found the whole
stash under her bed. Didn’t anybody

understand then that she and I
had, each in our own way, simply
been grasping for words.

Poem by L.L. Barkat, author of InsideOut: poems. Photographs by Kelly Langner Sauer.