The Wiring and the Current

I’ve been on page forty-two for twenty minutes.

My eyes track the serif fonts like a bird

hitting the glass over and over,

while my brain loops back to a porch in 2014

and a thing I said that sounded like a bruise.

The refrigerator compressor kicks on—

a sudden, shuddering mechanical groan

that snaps the thread of the memory.

I wonder if I am the thought or the thinker,

or just the gray static on a television screen

when the cable goes out and the signal is lost,

leaving only the humming of the electricity

searching for a picture it can’t quite hold.