Unspoken SOPs

Unspoken SOPs

Toyota engines are quiet when they hum into the garage

But we know the sound, and we know what it means. 

Our snacks will grow cold on the tv trays, and my brother turns the volume down 

As I straighten my legs, pull my hem down, wipe off makeup, arrange my self

Into something vague and seamless

Without expression, nothing to be misconstrued 

We are wooden like the African statues in a Navajo basket sitting by her desk with chipped arrowheads and pots of colored wax

We are strange things she’s collected.

A lamp, some pens

And a typewriter

We are broken like the Japanese pottery on the shelves she built 

Herself

After the carpenter got fresh with her 

(he won’t know any more than I do what he did wrong)

We say the words we are supposed to say

The way we are supposed to say them

Like a prayer almost, a mantra, a spell,

And keep silent the phrases that rile her 

Don’t touch your face

Or cough or beep

Don’t act like people you don’t know. 

Sometimes there are new ones

And we clock them away on our own shelves we built in our minds

We store her life

Like an imprint, 

flash photography, 

the negative captured and brought to light. 

No one knows her like we do,

Far better than she knows herself.

No one shows as much care to tend to her every whim

But she is tricky and full of surprises.

She turns quickly and snaps 

No matter how hard we were trying, watching, paying attention

Or maybe we had slipped

We were just kids after all

Sometimes we messed up. 

It didn’t matter once it started.

And afterwards we’d sink back to our rooms, creeping quietly,

without doing anything with our hands

And close our doors 

Turn the radio low

And read 

Or cry or build things

Or just think

Imagining, dreaming

Letting go, taking off

In mental flight. 

We had followed the rules and observed the warnings,

And unhitching our minds was the tiny little reward we had for ourselves

Once we had secured 

A little way out among all the trees 

Of our unspoken SOPs.