At his Victorian mansion, a certain stair has never held
Stephen King’s weight. Irrational, he admits, but it feels safer
to skip it. Franklin Roosevelt feared only fear itself
and a certain date each month on which he refused to travel,
even by armored Pullman coach. Thought he could make unluck
leave him be. Like my grandmother, Phyllis, who accommodated
every superstition: knocked wood, flung salt. Before passing
a cemetery, inhaled fiercely and braced. It was silly and I said
so, exasperated—though now, too late to be gentle about it,
I can understand the impulse as her misplaced faith. Neither Phyllis
nor Franklin greedy for fortune, only wanting a way to limit
its loss. How many cards in a suit, and none of them enough
to beat the house. How many hot cross buns in a baker’s dozen,
which owes its existence to the fact that we can always come up
short. Mark Twain refused to join a table set for certain number
of guests, perhaps thinking of the one prepared for Jesus
and his twelve most loved, who, after hearing their friend promise
the brokenness of his body, could only bicker among themselves
about which man would be greatest—another way of asking
Who will be in control? I answer when I insist on only whole-
grain bread, the gummy re-relayering of Coppertone Ultra 70.
When I inhale fiercely and brace—order my body to sleep. I number
the Shepherd’s lambs, some lost, and the birds of the air who want,
purportedly, for nothing. If I scatter seed, they will flock. It’s not luck
or unluck. Just a way to be as sated as the world will allow.
Abbie Kiefer is the author of Certain Shelter (June Road). Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and elsewhere. www.abbiekieferpoet.com
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
