Rooms
by Odin Roark

How prescient that first room
The one where under the bed
Proved private the light
Where flashlight and toy soldier
Became all that was needed

Came

The room with desk
Where locked door
Gave entrance to video games
While parents assumed study

Came

SATs where drawn curtains
No boom box
Only silence
And the study focus
Made the room

Came

The dorm room
With beer-can-crushing-to-the-head roommate
Making for final exam hell
Where stolen passions
With sorority queen fantasy
Made eating
A non sequitur

Came

The office walls
The room for fortune
Made eventually corrupt
With drawn curtains

Came

Marriage’s bed-room
That place where all became prescient again
Where a child would validate a wife’s existence
While with loving acceptance
A husband’s duty would be carried out

Came…

Came…

The rooms never stop
Some their final architecture
That of nursing home green
Other’s of palm-frond-shack freedom
Still others…
Soho 3-story condo prison

Rooms

Always unknown
Until they’re not

Forever a four-wall measure
The capsule
The coffin
Chosen destiny
One way
Or another