Small Knife
I carry the cheap bag from Aldi.
At the sink an apple bleeds a red thread,
metal on tongue. Light grits the glass;
the room pulls in.
Grandpa pared rot, set wedges in our hands.
Mother kept a tally in the fruit.
I kept score by silence.
I rinse the basin; the water pinks.
Cold climbs the frame. I lay newsprint,
press tape to the pane, a quick dressing,
corners lifting like scabs in dry wind.
I call Mother at work; her knife is steady.
On the line, I hear her turn the peel.
“Take it,” she says. I lift a wedge
to the window, bite the white, taste iron;
the basin blushes again, my tongue nicked.
Skins buckle in the bowl.
Sun stripes the cracked pane where the tape lifts.
We eat around the cut, the bruise we spare.
Care is a small knife.
Her blade finds brown, keeps the rest bright.
I taste the room, the cheap glue, the cold.
Slow as a scab, the corner rises.
With a thumbnail I pare the lifting edge.
At the cut, the pane works a little—
a thin cold entering, just enough to show the wound.
We press there.
*
Visitor Window
The screen wakes; the glass is ringing.
One pane won’t take two faces.
The laminate on my chest says VISITOR.
Facility rule: contact through glass only.
We raise our hands to its lit skin
and practice touch the window can read.
The room answers in glare: a bleached vase,
a mattress slid into the corner,
our photo clouded under taped plastic.
I say yes, yes, to steady the hairline
in the glass. Fourth move since school,
leases curl; a fingertip lifts the dust.
Between panes, a stripe of shine
the mop can’t reach. I pull the chain;
the blinds stutter to a stop.
Hallway: once a phone bright as a lure
opened, my mother’s voice folded in it.
Today the receiver is the window.
I grip my side of the glass and try not to shake.
Downstairs: from her room I shoulder
a clear trash bag past the rentals;
the weight slides back.
Courtyard: a rooster in a red helmet
pecks his mirror until the sensor chirps,
the indicator goes red; the glass stays shut.
Visitor hours end. The window keeps its rule.
A guard nods. The laminate sits with me.
My hands stay clean on this side, except the print
warming where we spoke, then cooling at the latch.
*
Sean Wang is a PhD student. His poems appear or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, wildscape literary journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pictura Journal, Soul Forte Journal, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), where his work was selected for the Broadside Series, among others.