I Could Drown You

By Cameron MacDonald

Image courtesy of alicia photographs (flickr.com)

I Could Drown You

I could drown you
with each word dribbling
from the leaky faucet in the basement bathroom.
You’d be the glass jar
underneath the drain.
And you’d store it behind the pickles
in the refrigerator of a stranger’s home,
mistaken for rainwater
of an April afternoon.

The navy tiles
match my grandfather’s eyes,
and the black cracks
like his wrinkles
when he’s burying the roots of peonies
in the wormy soils of the garden.
And in the yawning pipes
I hear his stories of lost pirates and islands,
the ones he told me in the rocking chair
after Sunday dinner.

I long for that ceramic tap
like teeth chattering,
and the turn of the brass knob
curving with the moon
in a midnight blanket
above this creaky house
of cold furniture
Deserted words,
dry on these chapped lips,
hidden in the pantry
beside the salt.

Cameron MacDonald is a young, aspiring writer and musician attending Ryerson University for English and Literature Studies. He utilizes his creative outlets to express the complexities of experience, pulchritude, and emotion through the dangling lightbulb of modernity. He has recently been published in The Claremont Review and The Continuist for his poetry and collaborative works.  Follow him on Facebook.