The Sleepers
The kitchen table wants to be a chair. It’s tired
of standing still all the time,
it wants to swipe the floor with its paws
and be stood on to change light bulbs and help
paint the walls a darker shade of green.
It wants a little bit of paint to drip across its back
so it can be green too. It’s tired of carrying
the weight of dead things.
Nothing speaks when the knives by the sink get angry.
It’s been years since they’ve been
sharpened. It’s hard to debone chicken
with blades so dull. The knives complain to an army
of ugly country tile, but it’s not listening.
It daydreams at night, imagining the smell
of its flowers blooming in the spring, how beautiful
each petal would be if it spread in more
than two dimensions. The dripping faucet only recently
explained what three dimensions are—
and the living room carpet is disgusted by all
this dreaming. This is serious, it thinks; we are serious,
it says. But the carpet wants to be a chandelier.
One night when it was lonely, it almost told
the doorknob its secret. If it had three wishes
it would say, I want to be a chandelier. I want to be
a chandelier. I want to be a chandelier to feel the pretty tug
of so much crystal and have my many lights turned
on off on. It wants to be best friends with
the light switch. It doesn’t want to be forced
to talk dirty to the vacuum cleaner just because
it’s clever, because it has leverage and is clever.
The sounds you hear at night are not
what your parents told you, not the house
settling on its foundation, not possums in the backyard
rooting though trash. They are the murmur
of all these desires rustling like silk.
Mingling with the sleeping dreams of children
who want to be adults, adults who want
to be children.
ξ
"The Sleepers" first appeared in Bellingham Review.
Derek JG Williams is an American poet and essayist. He is the author of Poetry Is a Disease, forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press. He holds a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Derek teaches writing courses online and develops curricula for GrubStreet. His poems and prose are published or forthcoming in Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Plume, Best New Poets, Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, and on Boston's MBTA trains as a part of the city's Poetry on the T program. He lives in Germany with his wife and dog. Learn more about him at http://www.derekjgwilliams.com/.
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