Prose Poetry: Morning Routine

Demons live beneath my bed, their dry-rot fingers snatching half formed phrases tumbling from my mouth like snores. Taking half-finished files away before I revise them, to share with goblin cousins living behind bedroom mirrors and sliding closet doors; who snicker at mismatched socks and colors, “Don’t mix black with brown,” they say. As the demons sneak under bed skirts and around clothes hampers to steal interview answers and sketched out canvases stacked in corners, popped like chips into stretched wide lips and black hole gullets to join half-digested research rabbit holes and midnight story scribbles.

But the sneaky small bodies of demons and goblins are nothing compared to the bustling Brownie in the kitchen, throwing flour around like she owns the place, clattering pots, banging the oven door, making a mess, yammering at her sister who stitches in the living room. As I step out the door, she finishes the breakfast feast she started at 5, platters of pancakes, waffles, and steaming yeasty rolls, fresh from the oven and stuffed with bacon and eggs.

Both silent. Scanning my body. Severing self-made puppet strings with needle-prick pupils, before they look at each other, chorusing, “Not quite”. The sister plucks at sleeves and waistlines like the tight-lipped alterations ladies that tick their tongues at in-progress proportions and the weathered wannabe homebody in the kitchen passes over platters, to hand me the last sour green apple, before shoving me out the door.

*Published in 2017 in The Mill. A Baldwin Wallace Student Run Publication.*