Young Writers Society

darling, love:
you hold
me over
a plateau,
restless.

those old flat-tops outside
call. beat-browed, simian,
red as footsoles.
drooping,
like kept petals.

you cant expect me to wait,
pressed between your pages.
I exhale all these indecencies,
and the psalms squish me
like toes.

hold it right there, you aint goin nowhere, you say,
the screen door hunches and bends at the waist
like a married daughter. one foot in, and one foot
on the other side of the planet. I straddle the continents.
they shift beneath me, restless as slaves.

I hold my breath and look out the window and trace the cracks in the glass.
in the family room the tv is on – sick, clicking, blue faces pulsing like aging filaments.
you harbor, contract; a hypochondriac. I sit here on the window sill and the leaves
bend, bow – graceful, dying dynasties. foggy breath, slim and phantom, I
shuffle you off like a skin cell, like a disease. you cough and summon.

but what you dont know, is that I look in the mirror when no one is looking. in it, there is a lip, a tooth,
a nostril. a face appears, unwanted and sudden as a pregnancy - your cold, godly hands
notwithstanding. (there are holes in the walls, in the foundations) I kneel at your footstool, tears
beading your toenails like sticky white grubs. your eyes are capsules, dissolving, spreading their
medicine. but I hold a secret, wounded and fledgling. I nurse it, guard it. you smile, I smile. your
ugly, sloped hand reaches out and

I serve you,
waiting,
waiting.