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Title: Cabin Door
Date: February 21, 2013
By: Laurie Peterson
City: Redwood
State: NY
Door #2 December 20, 2007
Cabin Door
by Laurie Petersen
If he even still has a name, it may be Carson. They think he came here to have a nervous breakdown. He just knows he needs to keep walking every day until he finds something. He doesn't know what it will be. He thinks he'll know it when he sees it. He wouldn't find it funny to learn it's already inside the door with him.
He has kicked that door open many times; he is an impatient person who thinks he is careful. Everything got too big for him. That's why he likes this shed with its coleman stove.
He hasn't learned to read the woods yet, but the woods know him quite well. Something in his chest hurts: it is the same thing the trees grow out of. Later in the year, they will start to peel, too, right through his ribs to his core.
They are going to think he came back from the dead-if he ever comes back.
Carson's Poem
It was forty-one years ago I had a red fire truck.
I would like to say so much depends upon
That red truck sitting outside in the rain:
It didn't, It doesn't.
Edges don't meet the way you want them to.
So you just keep going,
You can't keep what's out out.
But I am not on fire.