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by Michael Schmeltzer for Amber I am sure the urgent red dress of your voice is what caused this bruise, this absurd blue lake on the back of my thigh. You are singing in the kitchen, a knife to your mouth like a microphone. I am swimmingly drunk. I am spinning like a siren. Your song. Your teeth gleaming. When I topple we cackle. We are happy in our crisis. ~ I am afraid in the face of your silence. I have not forgotten the excitement in your voice, that livewire of light citrus. Such quiet violence as found on your lips, as found on the twilight-lace of a Tuesday evening when the teakettle stops its train whistle shriek. Without a word one of us retrieves the creamer, the other sugar cubes from the cupboard. It doesn’t matter who does what. That is the worst part.  photo by L. Maria S. Michael Schmeltzer was born in Yokosuka, Japan, and eventually moved to the US. He is the author of Elegy/Elk River (Floating Bridge Press, 2015,) winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and Blood Song (Two Sylvias Press, 2016) which was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. A debut nonfiction book, A Single Throat Opens, (a lyric exploration of addiction written collaboratively with Meghan McClure) is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press and is now available for pre-sale.
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