Deviation on the Personal Wake-Up Call

by Farley Walker

 

Outside your window, I switchblade the screen and plunge through the plastic blinds. I crawl into your queen-sized bed, breathe your pillows, slip on your XL t-shirt. And wait. If you don't return fast enough, I'll retrieve you in a laundry basket and skip to your parents' basement with drapes of iron bars. For you, I will chop down that magnolia tree out front, unhouse your mother's prize orchids, bind you in wool blankets and chant "Hush, Little Baby." We'll depart for the marina and pirate the yacht with a fireplace and champagne buckets. We will sail to an island not on the map, bake medium-rare on the murky sand. If you swim with stingrays too long, I will haul you back to shore and give you mouth-to-mouth. Then brand my name into your gold skin.