Paper Weight

You are rock and bone, sturdy eyes and heavy leaden shoes line up by the doorframe like splinters. The wood is peeling, and the stairs cave beneath our feet in surrender. My papa’s new wife would place glass paperweights on every surface of the house, like tiny orbs. I wonder know if she was trying to hold down the whiskey bottles that were swallowed up by each rise and fall of his chest on the sofa, Instead of old tax forms. I flick the lights and sit on the stairs in the dark and think how lately your hands are like the North Sea, colder than the night we got into the elevator staring up at our reflections on the ceiling and you said, “I think I love you.” You touch me with the patience of a jackknife, apologizing up the thirty-seven stairs to my apartment. “I am so sorry; you are my home.” I tell you that homes are made of wood and metal, and I am a human being I am leaving you. You kiss my toes and cry, I shut the door.