Sweet Tooth
- 29 minutes ago
- 2 min read
by Jason Davidson
It’s my pleasure
I would say to the women who came into the
shop to buy expensive ugly pillows for their
expensive sofas for their expensive day rooms
for their expensive houses haunted by their expensive
husbands that they spoke of like ghosts moving
through the walls of their expensive lives and
I would smile from behind the cash register until
the ding finished and then I would stand outside
and smoke cheap cigarettes in exchange for breathing
until one of the husband-ghosts rowed in like a
poison breath mint and bought a rug that looked
as if an unwitting soldier had bled out onto old snow
and he slipped me a twenty with one hand after I
carried that violence out to his expensive car
and his other hand held his number or morse code
and when I left the expensive store I drove up the
hill to meet him and he said I’m sorry son
but my wife and kids aren’t home and he showed
me a Milky Way and told me to get on all fours
on top of the bloody snow and while he haunted
me I pretended we were in a dying igloo and I
thought I heard glass breaking and wondered if I
would ever eat chocolate again and wondered if I
would remember the language of this compromise
one day and wondered if any brain releases this like
birds flying over the Arctic Circle turned black
by need and when he was done haunting me I
held my hand open like a bulbul’s busted claw
It’s my pleasure
and then I drove downtown to pay our expensive
electric bill and sometimes now when people
say I know how it is I think no you don’t
Jason Davidson is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and performer. He’s written, directed and produced over 200 works of experimental theatre and his one-act plays have been widely published. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, HAD, Club Plum, Pine Hills Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Burningword, Heavy Feather Review, Luna Luna and other journals. Jason lives on California's Central Coast with his husband. Find him on Instagram at @jasonwriteswords.