Three-Legged Dog
She’s overweight and quick to cry, my sister,
who licks Jiffy from a tablespoon, who wants to know
why I call her husband an asshole in front of everyone
when he enters the room.
You were always drunk, she says,
and turns to the sink,
Would you like a cup of coffee?
She brags about the cash they make
on real estate deals in the valley,
— anything can be explained.
I should remind her
he sneaked into my house, slipped upstairs to my room
my first day home from rehab, away
from cigarettes, drunks who chant expectations breed
resentments, styrofoam cups of coffee too hot to drink,
donuts cut to bite-size pieces, thinning trails
of powdered sugar, meetings where I’d go
unconscious, mumbling to myself, playing footsie
with the guy who croons the 12 steps without looking at the page.
There’s hardly anything to make of it,
twenty years of amends, rage that doesn’t end.
She says, You’re wrong about his hands
that found me sleeping. She doesn’t know
at aftercare men in the program called me hostile
but alluring. One night, during the Lord’s Prayer,
somewhere between “trespass”and “deliver us not,”
one-balled Peter asked me out.
I’m like a dog with three legs, he whispered,
you have to love me.