I am afraid there is

something terrible

 

wrong with me. I go

about my night things.

 

My walk makes a sound

like this, this—this, this—

 

footsoles shushing

the floorboards, whispering

 

trust—that the stair will be

there, when I’m able to cross

 

it. When I can. I look in

on my books like infants—

 

Oh you sleep so well, Jericho,

and Deuteronomy, and all

 

the other names I keep

in books with leaves

 

and four-leaf clovers—or

almost four-leaf clovers.

 

Whatever luck is possible

in pressed lettuce, or tulips—

 

what is too full of rain

to really keep, but not

 

to love. This penny

I glue to the bottom

 

of my shoe, keep treading

on—the face of the dead

 

good man kissing

whatever I cross.

 

*

 

Annah Browning is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program for Writers at The University of Illinois-Chicago, and the author of a chapbook, The Marriage (Horse Less Press, 2013). Her poems have recently appeared in Verse Daily, Indiana Review, Willow Springs, Boulevard, Radar Poetry, and other journals. She is an editor of Grimoire, an online literary magazine of witchy and the weird.