POETRY

By Justin Smulski

we split a tuna melt and some
coffees at a truck stop just by the
exit with four-dollar coin-op showers and a
sign clar­i­fy­ing that one must pay
before the shower and not after
across the shining table with
striped metal trim you held the
top of my hand like an heir­loom shard from some
crate of family mar­gin­a­lia redis­cov­ered under a
stair­case below a stack of old Paris Reviews and shoelaces
you were sharp and beau­ti­ful and
I just wanted to hum Chet Baker into the
ear of your freck­led soul with the
static of my tongue
when I drove to Stephen’s for my visit I could
feel you in the bottom of my
glass of lemon water and cross­ing your legs,
waiting, at the ter­mi­nus of Meryl’s stories that she
does not allow herself to end before they have
over­stayed their welcome and I do not know how to
be boxed in but I am waiting for you to
whisper some home­stead lengths
when I leave the door to the spare bedroom
ajar just a bit, just a bit, so their cat can come and go—
I feel you slip­ping your way in past the
deer that eat all their rhubarb and running your
lips over my roman nose and my
knees feel like Vesu­vius and a
kettle boiling over and old Phil Collins records
and I do not want to know what memory was like
back before you or Xenophon or Deuteron­o­my or the
Night Slope or the Acadian rus­ti­ca­tors or
before I ate half of your tuna melt and
built an altar of stalls in your red barn heart

Photo by Tibor Krizsak

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.