Expressive Domain

If You Want to Scare Me

Cover my windshield
with mist,
rain that morphs
into torrents,
torrents that flood
into fear,
fear that reminds me
of bloody sockets
where eyes
were lunch
for Hitchcock birds.

Leave me to grope
with my arms out straight,
bump into the chair
in the dark.

Darken my room,
cover my cage,
don’t let me see
the crimson water
streaming out of your
eyes tonight.

Your eyes are left
with empty promises.
Don’t let me see
tonight.

Slippery Fish

My eyelids instinctively squinted
and I had to turn my head
away from him
as if the saltiness
of the sardines
he was eating
could find a way
to sting my eyes.

He just laughed
as he dangled
the slippery fish
in front of my pinched nose
before opening his mouth,
dropping it in
and moaning
with an ecstasy
that a child
shouldn’t know.

Perhaps his intention
was a father’s expectation
that I would grow
tough enough
to cope with anything
and anybody.

If I had been a smarter child
I would have run
from his haunting laughter
that slithered its way
into my dreams.

But my tears were preserved
like salty brine,
and forty years later
as they begin to fall,
I smell the fish
and hear the cutting metal
of his opening can.