Literature

Just midnight. Footsteps stop

by the outside door. Inside

he keeps alert, feels the rapid

beating of his heart, listening

to feet scraping up the walk,

having heard a car door slam.

Who had he been expecting?

Nobody. He’d been reading

a novel by the fireplace, one

with scenes so violent they’d

stick in his head all week—

disembowelment, decapitation—

a book lent him by a neighbor

he’d never liked, who revved

his Harley Sunday mornings,

tossed around the trash cans;

a man with whom he’d fought only

this morning when his dog tore up

the black-eyed Susans, swearing

to murder the dog, which, for sure,

he’d never do, he only wanted

to scare the man, make him sweat,

but who that afternoon lent him

the book he couldn’t put down

that seized him like a rope squeezing

his throat. To make up, the man said,

to clean the slate; a man unknown

to tell the truth, who’d formed a plan

as fearful as murder, a stranger

at his door late at night, a sudden

shriek, and a book to soften him up.

You’ll love it, the neighbor said.