"The victim dreams of you in his doorway" - Zach Mitcham
You
stole from the man's old home place,
repeatedly,
like water eroding land's soft tissue,
copper
wiring pulled from walls, the trail
of the
refrigerator in the dirt, like a big animal
dragging
itself to the woods to die. You hauled
his dead
old Chevy to have it crushed for scrap metal,
the wind
knocked out of the cab, where the faces
of his
first son and his best dog lived passenger-side
in the
oily dust air.
So he waited for you.
His wife
urged him not to, but he took a blanket
and
pillow and put the pistol on a night table by the sofa,
where he
slept and spread pimento cheese on wheat bread
with a
butter knife, picnics of solitude ending
with a
bullwhip lifted, put back down, lifted again,
country
quiet, cicadas, rain's fingers on the tin roof,
religion
of the long surprise, little routines
like a
cross gesture over the chest, life or death.
He rose and washed, kept his hair combed,
breath
fresh, wrinkles steamed away, measured his heart rate
and made
a game of ever lower against the wait,
felt it
was not about property, but everything else,
became
better because of you, a wall to lean against.
His fence gate made no clank.
But lost
meat buzzed in your empty bone,
which
was a pipe scraped of marrow, your teeth sucked
loose in
the gum, stored poisons tasted in the gaps.
You were
the fog over wet grass but angular as a cave painting,
points
tumbling over themselves toward a poking.
And when your fingers rode up the door chain,
you
could hear him asleep. His presence was the gift, like darkness itself
chuckling
with you, lips licked on an upturn. Not property anymore.
Not that
kind of drug, some other pilot light at your brain stem,
your
gasses put to flame.
But you didn't hear the bee. It's little wings
moved
too fast for a swat. And when his hands came clear through the dark,
you also
drew, both of you in the doorway at sunrise, or perhaps it was sunset.
You just
saw the light baking behind trees as your trigger finger twitched
long past
use, a mouth severed from its body, still biting.
Photo: "Ball," Ben Gulyas
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