A River Down the Walls

A slow river of water

Keeps dripping

Down the walls

In the bedroom

I have been upstairs

I have spoken to the neighbor

She was kind enough

To let me inside her apartment

So that I could look around

And see that nothing on her end

Is leaking

And the super

Of the building

Even came to my apartment

And cut a hole in my ceiling

So that I could see

There were no broken pipes

Or, or…

Anything that could be causing

A leak of that kind

It had stopped by then

The leak

So it was a bit of a, um--

A Michigan J. Frog situation

Wherein I think the super

Thought I might be crazy

He left

I went about my day

Got ready for bed

And as I’m laying there, in bed

The water

Starts coming down

Long, slow streams

Of water

The kind where you don’t

Hear any dripping

And you couldn’t hear

The source

By then it was, oh god

One or two in the morning

So I couldn’t call anyone

But something felt--

Well I didn’t want

To sleep in the room

With water running like that

So I slept in my son’s old room

And when I woke up the next day

And went back into my bedroom--

Nothing

Not even so much

As a damp spot

In the carpet

Where the water

Should have been

Finishing up its run

No watermarks

On the walls

And now I thought

I was going crazy

When I called a plumber

About it

He told me

That water has a way

Of going all sorts of places

You wouldn’t think

And that it’s possible

It was coming

From somewhere else

In the building

But how does that explain

How it mysteriously

Disappears without a trace?

The plumber didn’t have

An answer for that

One night I dreamt

That there was water

Filling the room

And that I couldn’t get out

I was--I was strapped to the bed

Or just held down

By some unseen force

Outside I could hear

People banging on the windows

Trying to break them

To get to me

But they couldn’t break the glass

And the water went up my nostrils

And into my lungs

And when I opened my eyes

I saw that the water

Coming down the walls

Was not the color it should be

It was Caribbean blue

And I remembered

Taking my son to the islands

When he was little

And a jellyfish biting him

And us having to speak

An entire day of our vacation

In the clinic

Even though there’s not much

You can do for a jellyfish bite

He was so little

And so scared

And I told him

That if he closed his eyes

Every time he felt the pain

Pretty soon

He’d open them

And we’d be home

And he’d be in his bed

And everything would be okay

He kept closing his eyes

And refusing

To open them

He didn’t want to open them

Until he knew he was home

But there’s no way to know

With your eyes closed, is there?

You’ll never know

When it’s safe

To look