Melissa Fite Johnson
Linger
I never want to leave where I am
even if where I am is the dentist’s office.
I get all cozy on the soft couch with a magazine
waiting to sign insurance papers,
and nothing else matters.
Once I get to, say, the video store
I won’t want to leave there either,
even though after the video store
is home: my husband, dinner made, our dog’s
breath on my hand, backyard chickens
bobbing rotten apples beyond the kitchen window,
a good book, another couch.
Even when that waits, I'm content
to spend hours winding lazy figure 8’s through aisles,
reading: Alaskan wilderness, five students
with nothing in common, Woodsboro murders,
meet cute on a train in Austria.
Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), which won the Nelson Poetry Book Award. She was the featured poet in the Fall 2015 issue of The Journal: Inspiration for the Common Good. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as Valparaiso Poetry Review, Broadsided Press, I-70 Review, Rust + Moth, The Invisible Bear, The New Verse News, and velvet-tail. Melissa and her husband live in Kansas, where she teaches English. For more, visit melissafitejohnson.com.
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