Surface Tension

The front door is still humming from the kick

and the silence that follows is a physical weight,

a heavy coat I didn't ask to wear, and on the laminate

the cube he spilled is losing its geometry, the sharp

corners rounding off into a lazy, transparent bead.

I’m watching it through the steam of the sink,

the way the water makes a lens of the yellowed,

fake oak grain beneath it, distorting the pattern

until the wood looks like it’s drowning or stretching

down toward the floor, just a puddle now, a small,

cold failure holding its shape by nothing but the air.