The Kerf

The pine table is too wide for the door.

The hallway is a narrow throat

that refuses to swallow the wood.

I dragged the hand saw from the cellar

and felt the teeth bite the grain.

The sound is a heavy, rhythmic rasp,

the friction making my fingers hot.

One leg drops. Then the other.

The room is filled with the smell of cut sap

and the fine, white dust of a collapse.

It settles into the floorboards like salt,

filling the spaces where we used to stand.