John T. Leonard † Instability

There were shards everywhere for a while but then I forced the nausea down and crept my way to the front door, hands shaking as I limped across the neighbor’s lawn and tapped on their door.

Picture frames, road maps from the 1960’s, our parents’ wedding blanket—children in a sea of things unwanted.

What you and I resembled was a fistful of urchins—needles that people forget are alive unless they’ve spent a month under water. The entire town, deaf and devoid of voyeurs. Erase the air and pick up the phone, We’re calling to tell you about back pain or some type of new dish soap. Always during dinner, and the vein in our father’s temple would scream.

The damage happened quickly, like the first line of a song about drinking. He got right to it with the plate smashing, the drawers sailing through our kitchen window, crushing the neighbor’s petunias. White wine and whiskey spilling down the fishbowl. We wanted to hide our heads in the oven, to crawl into the lie of daylight. A week later, you whispered something about placing a canary bird in our mother’s casket. Now, blue curtains hang in our memories and we never pick up the phone— even if we want to call each other. We fall asleep like acid.