Nights awake in my father’s house—

          his passed-out snoring down the hall,

his new wife having left again for a hotel,

          the world sealed in snow. To love him

and still want to be lifted from there,

          to want to leave and leave

no footprints. And also the curious wish

          that someone might be awake in a window

watching me. This was, I now realize,

          a first longing to be read—though

I had no interest then in poetry,

          which can say: Child, you will be lifted

from that room; you can see yourself

          from every window—