by Zach Linge
Shit, the blinds open, the rags wet with soot,
or your robot vacuum sucking circles in carpet.
Baby’s got a playlist running in the background
so suddenly
this day of dusting into the spring
smells less like Lysol and more like a dollar bill
rolled tight, rimmed with a week’s worth of snot,
a pinch of blood.
You don’t know in the moment
why your busy lover rolling his PJs to the knees
seems the image of a wake, as if his funny wink
when he looks up at you were imagined: a face
in a casket staring. My God
is the minor key made
of actual demons? It goes A, B?, comedown sharp.
It comprises a short list of songs that could kill,
and every time one plays, its key signature thumps
in your veins like phone-lit nights in high school
spent playing Russian roulette
with a bag of blow.
You plucked at that white hill to spite your pulse.
You figured your first love would die of an OD,
held him anyway, and were right.
Your second man
would never think of you like that, so you slapped
a bag rocky with powder against your thigh, secured
it with Scotch tape, and took a plane anywhere,though you’d be back.
Addiction is an urge for noise
that sounds ended when it begins. Which makes it
harder, when baby plays certain songs, to stay clean
and sober in dry daylight:
the water-stained windows
open out into winter’s last breeze. It may be spring,
so this house will be clean by the inch, but what lasts.
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