This—this flimsy, flat metallic amalgam—
this is the key to our daughter’s last diary,
which we have lost and will now never read
to discover what she said in her secret
brain during those final awful months. In truth,
if we are being honest now, we threw it
away in fit of grief and righteous regard
for her frustrating obsession with privacy.
It went to Red Dog Shredz along with old tax
returns, useless licenses and diplomas,
and hospital bills she will never pay. Gone.
But we kept the useless key. We can’t say why.
A talisman, perhaps, against too much truth.
There are things parents do not need to know.
At her age—late 30s—she was too old
for the pink diary with the Sharpie warning
she wrote on front and back though I guess we all
have crimes and doubts we would hide and not admit:
the toxic waste buried in our own back yards,
the things we don’t want to know ourselves or have
our parents or our children or our colleagues
discover—even after death. Now like rats
that scratch in our rafters or the neighborhood
cat that leaves us dead presents on our back porch,
this key moves through our house in dark of night
Cecil Morris is a retired high school English teacher, sometime photographer, and casual walker. His first collection of poems, At Work in the Garden of Possibilities, comes out from Main Street Rag in 2025. He has poems in The 2River View, Common Ground Review, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Talking River Review and elsewhere.