Kimberly Sailor Front Door
The Captain’s Color Wheel
by Kimberly Sailor

Nautical in theme and shade:
a bold seaside blue
with a wooden ship’s anchor
nailed across the peephole. You said:
no one is suspect
in our neighborhood. Let’s unhinge:
wanderlust whimsy, the Sailor surname, shabby chic distinction.

Our neighborhood
became a pop-up crime lab
of high-tech doorbell cameras
and police patrols sweeping for knob prints
after a late morning jogger
ran to his own funeral
in a hydrangea tree town
where it could “never happen.”
He was twenty-six,
a discharged marine

with a daughter, aged three.

Remember our leggy kindergartener
holding her “First Day” chalkboard sign
on the freshly swept stoop?
Polaroids for the baby book, the one
with a delicate fabric anchor;
do you remember her seahorse shoelaces?

Oh, that stately Sailor blue, not yet morose in hue;
pre-deadbolt, surveillance, and touchpad installation,
our simple days, family stays, backdrop door,
that we didn’t know
would need a locksmith
to protect us
from human elements.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Shortly before quarantine measures and social distancing began, a tragedy occurred in our small town. Deputies from the sheriff’s office began appearing on our stoop, reframing the way I see our door. Who comes in, and why? I remain a little uneasy around our door; even delivery drivers bringing groceries during stay-at-home orders are given a longer glance. I’m eager to outlast and outgrow this phase in our house’s history, and get back to those scrapbook moments in front of our blue door.

Kimberly Sailor

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kimberly Sailor lives in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. She is the editor-in-chief of the Recorded A Cappella Review Board.  A 2020 poetry fellowship recipient at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and a 2019 Hal Prize poetry finalist, her poetry has appeared in the Peninsula Pulse, Sixfold, and the Eunoia Review. She is the author of the novel The Clarinet Whale, and serves as an elected official on her local Board of Education.