Hardwood Floors Poem by Livi Topley

On hard wood floors we eat our hard wood appetites, dowsed like liquored up addicts we beat and repeat and repeat the same monotone syllable lunch time.

We live in thatch houses ashamed of the stereotype, the stuttering days of yesterday, precarious swearing on our mortal tongue, slathering we pass our kisses on the crack on his head, he might be dead. We know he is suffering; we suffer too, laughing through his gritted fingers he keeps in, stifling.

In flesh we dig our nails; on chalk we cut initials to the skin with brick. We clean countless half cups of coffee, three week old plants gasp and collapse on stems that shatter like bone and thin paper leaves wither, green to yellow like a cataract lens.