Mantorvilla

We knew the faces, you and I,
and we knew the tongue, we knew the eye.
They're probably gone now faraway,
in some dusty corner, in an attic bay.

Mantorvilla, that was the lake, the woods, and
the old summer. It was deep within the North Woods, far from city lights,
close to the stars that beamed the living sky.
We use to go there my cousins and I, to reunite on and off,
in a brown cabin by a clear lake that sparkled and gleamed.
We started young, when the woods was long and dangerous,
until we we're old and started to have families of our own.
Then the woods changed, it emptied of the dark.
Now the cabin's empty, too complicated to resurrect,
but it'll always be full, brimming to the edge with wild memory.
None more powerful than the portraits upstairs by the fireplace.
Five portraits of the landlord and her sons.
Five portraits of young men in old dark suits, painted pale
with grimaces and wandering dark eyes.
Eyes that never truly focused on
whatever the artist demanded they focused,
so they focused on us instead.
We use to hide from them, deceive them, stalk them,
living canvas, that could reach out with a pale hand
from that glossy painted edge
and pull us into any variety of nightmare.
We played that hide seek so, we knew the best
corners, best places to be.
We knew the walls so well, every inch of them memorized
to this day, the cabin now gone or altered,
we'd still know the hiding places there
amongst the love
and dust.