The Great One strolled in,
Pleased as a fat slice of birthday cake,
In the mid afternoon heat and sweat
Of Low Georgia summer.
He kicked off his muddy boots
With the gusto of an aroused lumberjack
And took to the staircase as
A marathon runner takes to his first couple
Kilometers.

When he reached the hallway at the top
He hollered, "You've got ten seconds to be
****-*** naked, 'cause here I come!"
And he stripped himself of his plaid
And blue jeans,
Mud-hemmed socks and underwear,
And all his garments
descended half-way down the staircase
Before folding on top of one another neatly
As if gently placed there,
Rather than being flung at the zig
zagging carpet.
"It was the clothes' way of rebelling,"
No one, nobody said.
But most true things are left
Unsaid.

The Great One traipsed,
Yes, traipsed,
Down the short, blue-wallpapered hallway
And spun the shiny brass ****
Of his bedroom door, and pushed
Until It swung open,
And he said,
"Are you ready?"
And stared into the unlit bedroom,
The two north-facing windows open,
Short, floral pattern curtain his wife had
Sewn, flapping stupidly in a breeze that hadn't
Been breezing when he was outside,
Just fifteen minutes ago,
And the Great One saw that the bed was made,
Just a slab of gray polyester/cotton blend,
And his wife was not naked on that bed.
And the TV was off.
And the TV was always never off.

And the Great One stood very still
And felt the silence, and the stillness
Of the house around him,
How it seemed like a strange thing,
Against the rolling gray clouds and
Snapping wind.

He reached his right hand
To his right back pocket
And typed the four-digit alakazam
To get into his phone
and saw nothing new.
He rang his wife
But was transitioned to voicemail.
He sat on the edge of the bed.

Well.

the curtains flapped harder
Against themselves as he watched
The storm roll in.
And thought to himself,
A guilty child in an old body
prone to superstition,
"Shoulda cleaned my boots off,
'Fore I came in.
Shoulda cleaned 'em off.
She would have given me
Hell."

He let the rain come into the room,
It spattered against the soft yellow painted wall
And
The curtains simply shuddered,
Sodden as they were.

Well.

She sure had a knack of giving him hell.
The Great One changed his title back to David,
And stared out of the bedroom windows for a long time.
He woke up, without remembering falling asleep.