Are You Coming Back
Last night I tossed and turned, the night
torn mad with slamming doors and clanging radiators.
I threw pillows and covers all over
the room, woke in a terrible cold sweat.
I walked to the kitchen gingerly, feeling
the swollen, sore pad of my foot where I
picked up that barbed sliver of floorboard
like a prison shank. How sweet,
thinking about that splinter
and the way you came to me then, bent
to your knees, and pulled it out.
The kitchen was dark, the sink full of dirty plates.
I opened the refrigerator door,
the light illuminating everything. I pulled
the half drunken quart bottle from the door,
unscrewed the cap, and inhaled
the miasma
of tired, flat beer.
It smells so much better
on your breath, tastes better
on your mouth. I twisted
the cap back on, set the bottle in the door
and let it fall shut. Everything was dark
again. I lumbered to the sunroom and sat
in the red leather chair where you fold yourself
behind half-smoked cigarettes.
The leather was cold as was the streetlight
shining across the floor where windblown
ashes scuppered into dark corners
like paper thin insects. I sat
the rest of the night on the mattress
in the living room, washed in the glow of the TV,
a pair of pliers in one hand,
needle nose in the other, fixing
the bracelet that broke in the dining room
that night I tried to link it round your wrist.
It’s fixed now. Are you
coming back for it?
Dawson Steeber
Dawson Steeber is a union carpenter working, reading, and writing in Akron, Ohio. His poems and fiction can be found in Thank You For Swallowing, Pink Disco, Halfway Down the Stairs, CC&D, and elsewhere.
