Once upon a time, a door slammed
hard, and then it bounced once or twice
in its corrupted metal frame.
It was a screen door, you see, and it smelled
dusty. Bits of dead flies were stuck in the squares
of the screen, larger pieces and smaller ones,
some identifiable and some not. It was as if the flies
just reached the end of the world and expired,
and it’s possible that they were the dusty smell.
It’s possible that the slam of the screen door was
a warning, like the clouds, secretly full of the first snow.
But you were new in town and would never be old in town,
and you didn’t know how to read
anything
(that’s not true—you read books, faces, voices—but
you missed this particular warning,
the screen,
the flies,
the clouds,
the waiting snow.)

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This month, I’m once again doing the Poetic Asides Poem a Day Chapbook Challenge. Today’s prompt was “Once Upon a Time.”