the storm there was a storm last night you could hear the wind through the walls the rain against the windows all heavy and unrelenting and, sure enough, the ceiling started to leak three or four channels dripping down into my son’s bed onto the dresser onto the carpet we dragged the mattress into the hall moved the dresser up against the closet and laid plastic bins on the ground as we worked my son was crying in the living room “I’m sorry,” he said, again and again she sat down with him and held him close “It’s okay. It’s not your fault” I poured another glass of wine and sat down beside them listening to the storm outside, the storm inside all heavy and unrelenting and not a damn thing to do about it
active heart failure my brother messaged me said he was headed to the emergency room active heart failure but they would have to run some tests first I called our mother “don’t worry,” she told me, “it’s not a death sentence” then he messaged me again said it was cellulitis and that he would be hospitalized for at least a week “that’s much more serious” Mom said “what hospital are you in?” I asked him my wife and I left work early, congregated in the living room waiting for a response but nothing finally a message from Mom said it was just a skin infection and they were releasing him with oral antibiotics as for the previous diagnoses, he and his roommate were just spit-balling jumping to conclusions I felt flush my stomach sank my breathing quickened my chest tightened but I did not call an ambulance or anyone else for that matter for it was only anger and sadness that made my heart ache
the man who does not sleep here lies the man who does not sleep forty-one years became one hundred twenty-three no one knows why he did not sleep whether it was by choice or some demon but, like all men, death found him collapsed on the kitchen floor while washing dishes neighbors said they heard singing before the crash an old song they struggled to remember something about a woman walking out an old song now buried beside the man soon forgotten
crickets
my father had cricket legs
crawling out of his bedsheets,
thin and yellow and dying
his liver had finally failed
like a marriage
like an unemployed son
and his kidneys weren’t far behind
he had moments of clarity and delirium
“Did you turn the kitchen lights off?”
he had asked my mother
“Yes,” she said
then he started tugging at his catheter
“No,” she said, “Remember
how painful it was
to put it back in?”
he glared at her
then let it go
and the cricket legs trembled
and a yellow liquid passed through
the thick plastic tube
into a compartment under the bed
then my mother gathered up those legs
and placed them beneath the sheets
as he moaned –
a song I had heard of
my whole life,
but never listened to
until that moment –
Death
in the California spring
it sounded nothing
like crickets
cyclone there was a cyclone swirling over the city and he stood in the archway behind Starbucks drinking wine from a coffee cup the street lamps overhead burned bright orange as the rain danced side to side in the howling wind across the street he saw lit windows with painted walls, leather furniture, and giant television sets and there, in the window near the corner, he saw a woman walking around in her underwear she was young, thin, blond, moving in and out of view with a disinterested look on her face he wondered whether she knew the blinds were open, whether she knew there was a storm outside, whether she knew how many desperate eyes looked up at her through the deluge then she was gone the light went out the night had ended for one of them for the other there was wine and wind and rain
*****
Nathaniel Sverlow’s previous publishing credits include Typehouse Literary Magazine, The Fiction Pool, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Literary Orphans, Squawk Back, and Bone Parade.
