What Stayed

The documentary played and I wasn't thinking about anything

except the thing I was about to see.

Then the sound. Just a regular zipper,

the kind that would close a jacket or a bag

you'd take on a trip. My hands went

into my lap. I didn't tell them to go there.

On the screen, the fabric moved. The slider

moved with it, small metal teeth catching

what was inside, sealing it shut.

A sound like that shouldn't stay in your chest,

shouldn't live in the space between

your ribs like something that chose you.

But it did. It does. I hear it

when I'm buying groceries, when I'm

zipping up my coat to leave,

when I'm trying to sleep and the house

is too quiet and the quiet is full of that metal

moving, that fabric closing, that finality

that sounds exactly like nothing special at all.