THE VISITOR

He has come to your door  

many times before.

And he is here again.

You will do like you always do:

you will stand there

in the crack you’ve created,

knob in hand,

searching his face, looking

through the latch

into his slivered eyes,

his shit-eating grin,

listening to the sibilant S’s in his voice

try to sweet talk you one more time.

You so much want to trust this visitor.

You want to believe

that everything will be different

this time. And so you make

the mistake you always make:

you invite him in, you step aside,

and he enters.

Next thing you know—and it happens

faster than you remember—he has

thrown the dead bolt

and put the latch back,

he has locked you inside your own home,

taken your family hostage,

cuffed them to the kitchen table.

Where are you in all this?

You are handing him a cold “Oly,”

a bag of Frito Lays, and the remote.

You are now his servant,

at his beacon call,

while he watches the game 

splayed out on your sofa 

with his socks off, as the home team 

loses on their own turf.

You stand there in a daze,

while he hoots and hollers at the “tube,”

having the time of his life.