Danielo Home Movies [I think now of the dollhouse]
I think now of the dollhouse, its rooftop–
green-shingled, scalloped. I didn’t care much
for the dolls. I just wanted to open
& close a diecast dresser’s white drawers, run
my fingers over painted-pink flowers.
Oh, to sit, silent, by the red plastic
fireplace & think, then rearrange some
furniture, pour invisible coffee
into cups. Float up the orange staircase
like a ghost. But what I wanted most: to
be inside something candy-colored &
bright. In the photos online, the house is
dark even with that one side without walls,
interior exposed to the whole world.
Ja’net Danielo is the author of the chapbooks This Body I Have Tried to Write (MAYDAY & M3 Books, 2022) and The Song of Our Disappearing (Paper Nautilus, 2021). She has been a winner of the River Heron Editors’ Prize and the Fischer Prize and a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, the Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, and the Lascaux Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Journal, North American Review, swamp pink, and Diode, among other publications. More info at: www.jdanielo.com.
