Jeffrey Hermann
Life Being What It Is
We’re up to our ears in horsework. I mean housework. One of us does the ceiling and one of us does the floor. We meet in the middle. RIght now you can’t tell if it’s almost fall or almost spring. We decide on one and it comes true. I don’t mind saying I might have been born for caretaking. I like to make lunch and change sheets. I like to brush the coat of a large animal. We hold hands at the top of large buildings. Afraid of heights. I mean hearts. They say it’s one big muscle but that doesn’t account for anything. Living in a small house, I almost always know where you are. But sometimes I do not know where you are and that means you might be in the yard. I look out the window but it’s hard to see. Someone’s been breathing on the pane.
If You Had to Describe Love as a Shape But You Weren’t Allowed to Say Circle What Shape Would You Say Love Is?
You could be funny and say triangle. Ha ha. Or find a loophole and say oval. People who think about sex a lot will say rhombus. Which I get but can’t explain. If you say love is a hexagon or a pentagon I feel like you’re saying love is a trap. I can’t relate to anything with a lot of corners. Though I could see love as a parallelogram, a square someone leaned on. But the right answer is cone. How it begins wide open and comes to an end. Or the other way around and it starts at a point and enlarges, consuming everything.
Jeffrey Hermann writes short fiction and prose poems in his spare time. One day when he retires he will write in his regular time. His work is out there if you look. His wife and two children and dog mean everything to him. He has two books forthcoming in 2027, from Unsolicited Press and Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
