A new poem to share, tinted by October consciousness.
Remembering lying awake in the early morning in my grandparents’
house in the San Joaquin Valley, knowing the creaking floorboards were
my family, up early making coffee and starting breakfast.

Creak

The floors in my condominium 
creak and squeak as the wood 
under the carpet gives way under me. 
The windows give out onto views 
of the ocean and the coastal hills 
and other dwellings, streets where 
countless clustered lights are coming on. 
I am not alone if I move about the place 
and listen to the floors. 
These noises bring back memories. 
I wonder if they creak in houses we 
have left behind, when we move through, 
remembering. I hope they sag 
under the weight of us who haunt,
and wake the living people, causing 
fear. I used to wake there knowing 
the sound was someone sleepless, 
whom I loved. But something 
has gone wrong and now we're gone. 
We move invisibly through rooms where 
we are absences and memories and dreams. 
We creak the floors and make the curtains 
drift, then settle into chairs in places 
where the lights are long since out. 
We sit and whisper about love, transparently.  
Windows give out onto nothing but 
the past, flat and endless, steeped in fog. 

Kyle Kimberlin 
10.10.2010

Creak by Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under
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