And I Awake To The Silence Of A Room Poem by John W. McEwers

Did you ever notice that a couch's voice
lasts only while you touch it,
and just a tiny while longer.

There's the sigh, so soft, I hesitate
to call it a sound at all, but it is there
where the cushions slowly, agonizingly
revert to their previous tectonics.

And in an empty room this is torture,
In someone else's home this is death.

I can just make out, if I press my ear
to their door, the sounds of two friends
sleeping. One a wheezy snore,
the other, just waking as I did,
rustles in a bed that may as well be
earthquaked
rumbled apart,
thrown from its frame
until the their bodies crash
to the floor and the minds
scream in terror and their hearts
beat loud to drown out the couch's
aftershocks,
the house frights alive
and somebody finally makes me some coffee.