The Left One

The back door's been doing this for months—

pooling water just inside the threshold

like it can't decide which way the weather goes—

and I came home at eleven forty-two

and stepped right through it.

Left foot. All the way through.

I sat at the table. I ate the cereal.

Sock soaked to the heel, pressed flat

against the cracked tile,

the waterline sitting just above the ankle

like a ring in a bathtub,

like the high point of something

no one bothered to mark.

I didn't take it off.

And I want to tell you I was just tired.

I want to say it was a small thing.

But if I'd peeled it off I would've had to sit

with what that meant—

the seal I've been meaning to replace

since October, the way I keep stepping through

the same puddle and acting surprised,

the whole architecture of not dealing.

I found it on the bathroom floor the next morning.

Gray. Stiff at the toe.

Holding the shape of my foot

without the foot in it.