Well of Loneliness
One night
I find myself suddenly not wanting to sleep
in the room we used to share,
even though it’s been years,
long enough to have packed away all these feelings,
even though I thought I had somehow
reclaimed every corner of this house
that was once ours
from that memory of an us
that was only half me.
But it seems, suddenly,
as though this house has been built
upon a well of loneliness
that sinks down thousands of miles below,
and the springs that feed it
have suddenly surged,
spilling their waters into the basement
and up into the walls.
It drips from the outlets and wiring,
from the light fixtures themselves,
leaves the bedclothes damp and mildewed
and the bathroom tiles slippery with the sense of loss.
The carpets molder and rot,
and the floor boards themselves soften
and threaten to give way.
And I suddenly wish I could be anywhere else but here,
where your sudden, too brief return
has torn the hardened tissue from the scar,
leaving me to remember a love I was careless with
in this house that seemed only like a home
in the time you were inside it.
Carlton D. Fisher is an Instructor in the English department at SUNY Jefferson in upstate NY, near the Canadian border and the owner and Executive Editor of Jane’s Boy Press. His work has appeared in Assaracus, The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Sugar Mule, OCHO, MiPOesias and other publications , and is forthcoming in Weave, Main Street Rag and several other journals and anthologies . He was a finalist for the Allen Ginsberg Award in 2014. He is currently completing several manuscripts while working on his doctoral degree at SUNY Binghamton. For more information on, please visit his website at www.carltondfisher.com
