Tiny Pine

Sunday wakes up t-bone thunder. I wander through the traffic of an air mattress, looking for a place to lay my rage. Dawn is nowhere in sight, so I swaddle the fury and carry it outside. The storm door is open, tight hinged, banging in the storm. Wind chimes crush brick walls. Wind ghosts through the open lip of bottleneck emptiness. And I watch, wearing my Daddy’s big t-shirt and barefeet, letting the humid day after Christmas in. Daddy taught me that fire needs oxygen to ignite. The recessive howl takes me into her rules out from under his roof. Drenched to my blood, my love, I apologize. I cannot breathe in and at the same time “Let it out.”

Night arrives early. Hovers around my bed, provoking sleep, that dry marital duty. I lie awake during it, counting ceiling tiles. Silence rouses the monster under my bed and boxsprings groan at its rising. We are the dust drenched threesome of skin, graft, and bleeding. Invisible lovers of the stink. The neighbors whisper “Was that climax or heartache?” Something, or daylight, breaks. I am raw, the price of a blindfold brought to a god fight.