When Her Feet Touch the Floor by Erick Mertz

Each morning, she reads her body temperature

from a bedside thermometer.

A fraction less than normal

because her feet touched the floor today, she thinks.

Perhaps the windows,

open throughout the August nights, much cooler, more
unsettled than before.  


Whatever perimeters we might seek to describe,

this hollow,

it creeps in, it makes residence behind our edifice:

no summer days, no commune,

such a field as we were poised to run in,

brown and barren. Yet everywhere, I describe there are vases
filled with flowers.


________________________


Erick Mertz is a Portland, Oregon based writer, filmmaker and poet with recent
work featured in magazines such as elimae, Deronda Review, 580 Split among
others. He has written a number of nationally recognized screenplays, produced
his own work in a short format and works as a ghost writer while shuffling through
the many drafts of "Pale Doors Don't Open" his first novel.