Notes About The Poem
The fragile act of stitching ourselves back together with mismatched thread is a triumphant, necessary proof of being alive.
The Living Room
There is a sudden crowd inside the ribs,
a heavy shifting of weight,
like old furniture dragging across a hardwood floor.
It is the nervous, rhythmic friction
of a thumb tracing the rough seam of your jeans,
over and over,
trying to anchor a body that feels too light.
You stand bare under a noon sun
with nowhere to tuck your hands,
the throat closing up like a dry pipe
around words that refuse to be smooth.
It tastes like the bitter, metallic burn of morning coffee
scalded against the top of your tongue,
the physical evidence of rushing into the day.
Then the floor drops away,
that sudden, terrifying lurch in the gut
when your foot encounters only empty air
on a dark staircase you thought you knew by heart.
The silence follows, heavy as a wet wool coat,
settling into the quiet hallway upstairs
where the floorboards stop creaking,
and you realize the house has gone entirely still.
But the lungs remember how to expand.
A laugh breaks out, unrehearsed, ugly, and loud,
the kind that jolts the shoulders
and leaves you blinking at the sudden light.
It is the cold, sharp shock of air
filling the chest right after the crying stops,
tasting faintly of ozone and salt.
We are of a fragile, clumsy construction.
We bruise against the corners of tables;
we stitch ourselves back up with mismatched thread.
To be alive is just to leave the front door unlatched,
inviting the weather to wreck the kitchen,
and standing there in the debris—
bruised, exposed,
and entirely glad to have felt the storm.
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