a toast for house spaghetti dinner with a necktie, fresh overcoat, potted plant my body and my clothes in the street silent then under a burst of jetting rain the daily news knocking, vegetables, and fruit, your phone calling me by name tonight’s cars, a Volvo, a Trans Am, they’re an all-surrounding everywhere asking for permission and I’m faithful, Israel, I’m parting my wet hair I’m parting my wet hair, reaching backward, sailing forward I’ll sit down and write it in a letter one day, to you the sweet, perspiring until there but now onward my face travels with more water, until inside, until inside where I track and drip and you wearing shoes from amour and company, a banister growing tall your shoe fantasy’s true as almost most pressed down, tactile beside my face from your stair I could be at your feet, and the thought of your hard shoes a private monument that holds the night to our designated time, our book written with curious heads, to press the pen down and down, so run down and down the stairs faster, and pull me up like air, dizzy seams because I made it and I’m waiting, ridiculous in your foyer
William B is a writer living on a farm. He is the author of a chapbook: ‘Energy Parkway’. His newsletter Cloud 8 brings together writing prompts, personal essays, literature, and art.