lying in wait

when I was five-years-old, I had a little sack of marbles.

the sack was transparent plastic, one of the early zip-lock bags,

used for sealing deep-freeze cutlets

and keeping sandwiches fresh in the lunchbox.

I adored my collection of marbles.

some were transparent.

some were opaque.

some had rainbow pigments swirling through their core,

like frozen flames.

Illuminated by the sun,

the marbles were glowing spheres,

with continents of glass

and oceans of spit-fire.

when the sack of marbles was misplaced,

I clung to the idea they were in one of the drawers

of my grandmother’s China cabinet.

while visiting my grandmother,

I would go into her dining room and inspect the drawers

of her China cabinet,

searching in between packs of gold-trimmed paper napkins

and rarely-used silver utensils,

hoping that I would recover the sack of lost marbles.

but they were never there.

repeatedly, for years to come,

I tried to locate the marbles,

tucked away in one of those drawers,

as if whatever mistake of providence in their not being there

would correct itself.

but they were never there.

my grandmother passed away.

my grandfather passed away.

the China cabinet was sold in an auction.

my grandparent’s house was put on the market

and later torn down to build

a two-story obstetrician’s centre.

sometimes,

I still return to my grandmother’s dining room.

alone,

without longitude,

without latitude.

I move through doorways

that have been sealed by time.

I pass along vacant walls that have no other side,

peering into mute corners

that were once warm

with the aroma of anticipation.

I move over to the China cabinet

and slide open the deep, heavy drawers.

I rummage my hands through their phantom contents,

looking for the eyes of the tiger,

the miniature maroon tempests,

the little, dislocated worlds

that refracted the daylight

into scattered prisms.

as I stand there

in my grandmother’s dining room,

in front of the China cabinet,

with my arms sinking into the vacuum before me,

I happen to look off to the side.

I see daylight shining in through the curtains,

above the metal slits

of the central air-conditioning vent.

and I wonder,

how did I get back in this room?

which sun is that,

shining through the impossible windows?

and then I wonder,

should my roaming fingers happen

to feel something,

lying on the bottom of the drawer,

what would it be?

a tarnished silver ladle?

a set of never-used cocktail toothpicks

with festive, multi-coloured streamers

attached to their end?

the echo of petrified laughter?

the compass of dreams?

what would it feel like,

if I happened to reach into the anonymous dim air

of that anonymous dim place

and grasp something hidden?

something tangible,

that had been waiting there

in that drawer,

in that room,

in that house,

all along…