I slept on a couch
with board underneath
and when I inhaled
first morning breath
it was sticky and sweet and comfortable.
Nana comes bull rushing through
slamming and screaming her deaf way.
Rising with aching back
I shake my oversized cousin (miraculously asleep)
and rouse him from the loveseat
he’s packed into like a can,
I drag him to the kitchen.
Nana doesn’t eat breakfast but stands by the stove and watches us all.
She’s gearing up for the day
yelling at my grandfather and
throwing down silverware and glasses of milk.
We sit in the same chairs for twenty years
Eating Pillsbury crescent rolls like communion cakes.
*****
Jonathan Baker is a senior writing & linguistics major at Georgia Southern University, where he won the 2015 Brannen Creative Writing Award for fiction. His work has been considered for the AWP Journals Project, and he is a reader for Bull Men’s Fiction.
