advents 

we kick open doors to find
chocolate on the other side. i know
the year is rapidly coming
to a carnival because every store
is selling advent calendars. 
all day i have been fantasizing about 
disobedience. do you think we can
make the powerful feel the fear we do?
is it worth it? or am i just supposed
to open doors until there are 
no doors left? until the year is slippery 
& done? i have become less & less sure
what i want to happen. as a child,
i craved the advent calendar. my mother,
cunning as always, bought calendars
with bible verses beneath the flaps.
she would read them aloud as 
i chewed the sweet treasure. a brief
breath of milk chocolate. each shaped
like an angel or a star or some other
symbol for glory. i don't remember
any of the verses but i remember exactly
how a piece of milk chocolate melts
on your tongue. the days when my brother
got the piece instead of me. the way cold wind
moved through the old house. then, in the 
creaky last days of the year, how the calendar
sat vacant. nowhere else for us 
to burst into. i don't buy the calendars anymore.
i do not even track the moon like
i probably should. i feel like doors are
something that happens to me 
rather than that which i open. i see a picture
of a local slumlord's house online. it is huge &
i imagine it as an advent calendar. 
what do they count down? i am looking
for hope in bites. in windows. in doors. 
in holding on to autumn. i open a door.
the bathroom light like a star or an angel.