Contributor: J.K. Durick

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It's just as you imagined it would be.
It's night, it has to be,
and you're alone again,
as quiet as the rest of the house.
Perhaps you're reading,
or, better yet, shuffling bills
poised just this side of a decision
about your life
like leaving Margaret, or Henry,
a diet, the guitar, even at your age,

and then you hear him bump into the chair
you left out of line for that purpose
in the living room,
or you hear him trip on the stray shoe
in the kitchen,
perhaps, the floor creeks in the hallway
just outside the bedroom.
The sound is subtle, slips to silence, but
it's there, he's there,
like you knew he would be.

Already you feel the knife go in,
his hands on your throat tighten,
or, it's a bullet this time,
with all that noise you hear
suddenly
like the flash, the smoke,
then the numbing pain
then nothing.


- - -
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Black Mirror, Deep Water Literary Journal, Eye on life Magazine, and Leaves of Ink.