Happy birthday, Miss Emily …

… Emily Dickinson's Birthday, Emily's Room.

I arranged to spend an hour alone in Emily’s room from 5:30 t0 6:30 on the 26th. The house was empty but for the kind docent who escorted me upstairs. In the poet’s room she left me much alone, a loneliness that felt deep but did not last long. For five minutes or so, I breathed and did not move except to scan the room. I stared at the bed first, the bed where Emily lounged and slept, dreamed and died. My heron eyes swam into the shawl spread across the mattress, one of her shawls, one she liked wearing.

I stood outside that house once. It was closed to the public the day I was there.