Cold floor colder
than my sweat,
his voice a Tennessee hush
at my ear, hand soft on my back
as if to say he will not hurt me
if he doesn't have to so I know I got to do
my part to help him, show
I'm hardly breathing, not blinking,
not looking at his shoe either
with its swamp-bottom muddy canvas
and the torn maple leaf caught
between the laces.
Lying beyond his left foot is my notebook
with the chapter I was working—Don't get up
Don't you move—
he brushes a strand of hair from my forehead
same way Albert used to do.
My adrenaline pumps into the tip of the gun
at the back of my skull
and pulses with his.
As the buddy gets the cash drawer open,
my jaw hugs the tile so their smoothly-mounded
whispers won't turn into mountain peaks,
so that finger on the trigger won't become
a comma, so this man who smells
of axle grease and Old Spice
won't be the exclamation point
at the end of my story.
Something slides, falls over, a door slams
against the wall, feet pound off down the hall.
I press my fingertips to the floor until dawn
fills the room with the cleanest kind of light.
Days later, the detective wants me
to pick him out of a night-sweep line-up,
the one with a moustache
and an upturned collar.
The one who decided
not to kill me.
I say he isn't there.
