December 6th, 2019
after Daylight by Taylor Swift
As the cat weaves through my legs yelling for more food, I brew coffee
in silence & leave a mug for my partner on the counter where
the steam lifts off the surface for a time until cooling to room temperature
while I put on my coat & exit our apartment to chase the last moments
of the dying moon & I arrive at the rink, my second job, unlock the doors,
disarm the alarm, fill the zamboni with water, & when it’s full I begin
resurfacing the ice: driving the machine in slow circles, raising & lowering
the blade to shave off the top layer, putting down water to create new ice
in preparation for the league games set to run all day & while driving the zam
I’m reminded of the motions a body goes through; how anxious I can be
at the thought of staying still & yet, like the zam, I keep moving in circles
as if my body is a fraying thread & maybe I refuse to settle down
& maybe that’s alright but I wonder about time & to be honest sometimes
I don’t wanna think of anything but the schedule of a day & currently
it’s December & I know open possibilities are often roads that lead somewhere
unknown like the promise of college leading to a good job & stable income
& a home in the suburbs, but it seems we’re stuck living paycheck to paycheck,
working multiple jobs to get out of debt & I’ve been so caught in the routine
I’m forgetting what it sounds like to hear her voice drift to the living room
while she sings to herself in the shower & instead I focus on this persistent beep
coming from somewhere below our unit at sporadic times like some devil
sent here to drive me mad waiting for the noise to go & also waiting for it
to return. Is it possible to be too tired to slow down? Is it possible to love
repetitive cycles? Look, if I’m not being clear know I’m talking about blood
& the way it moves through a body in an attempt to hold everything at once,
talking about missing us dancing around our apartment to Taylor Swift
as the cats exchange glances & snow slowly erases the streets of St. Paul
forcing us to stay home & watch Christmas movies & drink beer while
playing cribbage in the glow of our lamps & casually I look for her hands
like I did when we were fifteen in an attempt to find some pattern
of how they fit in mine like maybe the groves can act as constellations
& I’m afraid of most things like commitment & constant failure, but mostly
of nights & becoming the type of person who lets life move around him
without ever really appreciating a spontaneous hike through the wild
of a city or a clock with a dead battery or a broken mug that allows us
to laugh & that laugh reverberating around our walls, holding us close.
Steve Merino is a meat raffle host, a zamboni driver, and a poet living in Saint Paul, MN. He received his MFA from Hamline University in 2019. Steve's previous work can be found in Oyster River Pages and Shark Reef. Find him liking posts on twitter: @steve_merino