You do a little broken dance in the vicinity.
Really that’s all there is to it.
The dustpan’s tiny ramp,
The hand that cups the struck match.
Highs in the lows and lows
in the uppers.
We leave our dimpled beds
and lock our belongings behind a door,
and who knows what time is doing time for, but look at the care
with which the hand of the hidden body sometimes pats us down.
© 2008 Misty Harper
studied creative writing at Indiana University. She lives in Atlanta, and contributes to False Magazine.
