FOUR THINGS by LEAH MUELLER
A Third Chance
After his second wife left him, Leo decided to live underwater.
At first, it was hard to get used to the dampness. Leo’s underwear always felt wet. He tried to shake water from his shoes to no avail. His pudgy feet sloshed when he walked.
Leo liked to watch a certain mermaid in the seaweed. Her tail’s glittering scales reminded him of silver spikes. He was afraid to speak to her, however.
One afternoon, she approached him. Leo trembled. What could she possibly want?
She waved an unlit torch in his face. “Got a match?”
Trembling, Leo lit the fuse.
Savasana
You’re stretched out on the floor. Resting on your back. The ceiling looks like sky.
The sun no longer remembers how to spread its beam to your submerged bones. You’ve given up waiting for its return.
Sometimes, its heat pierced your skin like molten spikes. On other occasions, the warmth was imperceptible, like the faint brush of summer clothing.
You’ll lie here until the last beam parks behind the horizon and shuts off its engine. Then your molecules will dissolve, one by one, popping like bubbles until they become pure oxygen. Peace and silence. You finally made it home.
Three Quarter Life Crisis
An oasis
of microbrews
and food carts
in the middle
of the New Mexico
desert. I’m not
forty, like when
I backpacked
through Europe.
Now, I recline in style:
central air conditioning
and a sparkling pool
with lounge chairs.
All the accoutrements
of middle-class comfort.
Outside, muscle cars
roar down 66,
searching for
that vagabond dream,
while I run on fumes,
with stomach knots
and a crooked spine.
I sleep in a bottomless well,
on a soft mattress
with organic cotton sheets.
In the morning,
cable television
and fluffy white towels.
I pretend to be
a wealthy eccentric,
before returning home
to food bank vegetables
and social security.
Life is the twisted
road that lies ahead:
endlessly unwinding
and paved with potholes.
Midwestern Idealist
When I was a kid.
I wanted a tree fort
and a telephone clothesline
with plastic cup receivers
between my bedroom
and the building next door.
We moved every few years
from one boring town to another,
and the adjacent houses
were either too far away,
or occupied by old people
who spent their time
watching soap operas
and perusing Reader’s Digest.
Our backyard trees
were never strong
enough to bear the weight
of a wooden structure,
and my parents didn’t want
to build tree forts,
or do much of anything,
except send me to the store
for bread and cigarettes.
I spent my adolescence
walking to a pond
behind an auto junkyard.
Staring at the freeway,
I dreamed of escape, and
wrote poems about alienation.
Now, I like my next-door
neighbors, but we
talk on cell phones,
and have no need of clotheslines.
Since I live in the desert,
no trees grow in my yard.
Maybe I’ll pitch a tent
beside a prickly pear,
and make believe I’m
slumbering in oak branches.
It shouldn’t be too difficult.
I can imagine a lot.
I’ve had plenty of practice.
Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Bisbee, Arizona. She is the author of nine prose and poetry books, published by numerous small presses. Her latest chapbook, "Land of Eternal Thirst" (Dumpster Fire Press) was released in 2021. Leah’s work appears in Rattle, Midway Journal, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. Visit her website at leahmueller.org.