Regarding the Key:
I believe that it has to be wrong.
Every day I have forced it at every degree
and even on Friday
scraped all the skin off my right thumb's knuckle
on your front door -
it'll never go in.
Of course,
I walk the outside of your porch
each morning and evening
and push fresh meat through the mailbox for Tom,
though I panic a little at this -
at maggots
and mould
if he isn't a quick enough eater.
To save your documents rotting,
I lie to the post man:
I confiscate anything bearing your name
and tell him I see you for coffee each morning,
though this is by no means ideal;
he's a trickster for timing -
some days I clean miss him by seconds
and others am sucked into pacing your path for an hour or more
until he arrives.
The man himself is a
very
curious
bird.
I tell you that when he is staring
and often he is;
his straightened teeth,
his narrow veins and lazy sleeves,
I feel most strange at your door,
indeed it is tricky to push soft meat through a letterbox cleanly
and act all the while as though it were nothing but paper.
On such days that he lingers
I'm forced to confess it out loud: I'm chasing an empty house!
I say that perhaps you forgot me;
you're often a rather cruel, ineffective friend
and with my back to him then
I am canny:
I cram any letters I'm holding
into the hole
I cut into my coat lining
and with my mouth in the shape of a smile,
walk by him,
adrenaline baiting my guts in a torpor
though, like a magician,
I torture the thought
that something is waiting to fall.