The first question on the long list

asks, “What did you do with it?”

 

While I tap dance away, heel, toe,

in a school-marm meander too slow

 

for the multiple antecedents

of “it,” I slip and slide down

 

the laundry chute, fall toward the odor

of ignore and avoid, the black gap

 

of gifts without thanks, the old map

with “x” erased, doe-see-doe with hand

 

withheld, back turned, solo waltz. The next

question looms like a storm, lightning

 

not a metaphor. I can’t look and turn

away to the open window, to the blank

 

frame of the mirror. There is my bed,

there is the desk piled high and a laptop

 

waits for an answer. My dervish dance

spins me straight into a corner.