With Just the Door Ajar

by Ken Haponek

1

Emily shuts her door and shuts her door. She puts down her pen and puts on her goggles.

Tinkers with her contraption. Adjusts lenses. But Microscopes are prudent in an emergency—

she murmurs. Her left eye throbs. The old wound.

2

Time passes. This is the problem. This is always the problem. She would like the Sun to stand

still. To even slip backwards. For all to be as it was. To feel once again a hand in hers. Her

thighs like two piano keys pressed and pressed.

3

Power is the problem. The machine waits like a Loaded Gun she shakes her head. Children are

at the door. They have their flowers. She has baked nothing today. Will they take her words?

They will not. Her father’s words. Thomas’s pen. The mill. The mill—

4

Emily adjusts the straps. She does not know what will happen. The wind whispers its

temptations through dusty glass. These are the days when Birds come back. Closes her eyes.

Moves the lever.

5

Mugs wait in sink. They are hand wash only. She takes a sip of lemon ginger tea. Adds

Cascade to the shopping list. Considers her streaming options for the evening. Maybe she will

post this afternoon’s missive to Twitter. She wonders what @Tickle-Monster3 will think of

today’s letter to the world. Fingers find the light switch. On and off. On and off.

6

She wakes. A pandemic ebbs and swells. Where are the sanitoriums she has often wondered but

not aloud. People tend to look askance at her diction but not at her talking to herself. So many

talk to themselves in this age. At first she thought she had found her kith. The harbinger of a

new strand of humanity. Then she learned they talked to others not there. Like angels among the

dew. Emily feels alone and not alone.

7

Covers up to jaw, she opens the app. Fishers of Men, Fishers of Women she whispers. Swipes.

Swipes again. Reads. Deletes. Reads. Deletes. Reads. Reads again. Closes eyes. Fingers

twitch as if she holds a pen.

8

Emily cries herself to sleep. She believed the two would slip into the dash but instead they left

her with a string of apostrophes. Apocryphal Fortune’s Fool Her microwaved burrito lies like

an unchiseled gravestone within her womb.

9

The bed is made. Toilets clean. Rent paid through month’s end. She stayed through the

equinox. Emily feels sadness that she will not see her favorite trees begin their slow fade into

barren branches. She wonders if she will make it to Amherst in time for the festival. Chuckles

and shakes her head. All the leaves are brown. And the sky is gray She will leave these lines

here, speaking in their speakers. Adieu Ziggy Pulls lever towards breasts before a reply.

10

One piece. One evening. She watches the flames and thinks of their eyes. Their words. Their

lies. Wild nights Wild nights they whispered in her ear. On the last night of her last year when

the last piece burns, she tosses her goggles in and listens to the pop—the slow blur. Tonight she

will dream of her favorite florist down the block. The smell of Wednesday lilies. Her poemed

fingers twined in their beautiful hand.