wallpaper

wallpaper was a thing
in my house growing up
experimenting with burlap, grasscloth —
chair rail and ceiling borders,
partial and entire walls, rooms throughout

silhouetted Hollywood movie stars
from the 1940’s, icons
enshrined in black and white columns
on precisely printed papered walls
seemed “the bomb” to the previous owners
but gave me nightmares at seven

for my brother’s room—
hand-painted junior high graffiti
of the ELO spaceship,
music measures from PDQ Bach,
Snoopy and Red Baron,
not too graphic language,
and favorite lyrics pushing limits
on wallpaper bricks

flowers, butterflies, vines, leaves—
almost anything to cover
the years of cracks
the then 60 year old lathe and plaster contained

I once read where
stories, special dates, family genealogies,
poems and histories were sometimes
written on walls
before new
wallpaper and glue was adhered—
and I tried that once in my teenage room
with a poem called “Patterns” by Amy Lowell

I still think about
that house, that life,
that young me,
those rooms, and their walls,

the secrets and stories they keep and
sometimes leak between the seams

we don’t leave those days behind like a snake with its skin

youth isn’t shed—just papered over