I heard some movement at my front door
but it was just a storm.
Drank my beer over the sink
so I didn’t stain my shirt anymore.
Fixed the leak
and found a place on the floor.
Wife’s been leaving the back door unlocked.
Not every night,
but enough to raise the question.
She bought some paint and a brush home
from Benny’s Department Store.
Had me paint that old back door
as black as a raven.
So I stripped myself to the waist
to feel the Halloween breeze
and did as she pleased.
I heard her unlock it
last night in her sleep.
There’s nothing out there beyond the fence
except the old house and the woods.
Nothing to be scared of, I guess.
But some mornings she sits
perched over her coffee
staring at the aspen,
eyes slow-rolling
over folds of barking dogwood bracken.
We used to take long walks, you know?
Down old logging roads
looking for railroad spikes and animal bones.
Once we found cloven footprints in the snow.
The kingdom of timber throne,
empty to the air
a stark, bent branch chair.
And every night before dawn
wild dogs howled across the countryside,
and we filled our cups with stray pup laughter.
Now there’s a man coming at us
through the duff
out there.
How did he do it,
I wonder?
Find a way through the maze,
uncut unscathed
the come-gone scent of slapdash rain.
Sometimes it’s hard not to feel
like one of her dreams.
Like dirt under her nail.
Like the evergreen Studebaker
her aunt used to drive.
She used to dream of an office in Chicago
where she could sit and watch the people go by.
Far from the farm
and the weathervane crows,
somewhere down the highway
past the hills and throes.
He’ll take her there someday,
I suppose.
When I walk the path of dazzling brier,
when I retire.
Lay down my hammer
and sigh.
Find the little town upriver
where her uncle once sowed treason.
When the day retreats
and I tip my cap
to the dead-leaf days of autumn.
When she forgets even the mystery of me.
When the breeze rolls in through the black door.
Then I’ll stay.
Then I’ll stay.
Then I’ll stay.
Mack W. Mani is a Pacific Northwest based author and poet. His work has appeared in publications such as Strange Horizons, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Rhysling Anthology. In 2018 he won Best Screenplay at The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. He currently lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon.
