poetry: the hermit

In a small house under a long bridge lived a hermit with purple teeth and wild yellow hair.

At night he howled at the moon and in the morning he drank coffee.

Afternoons were spent in green grass with a thick book.

He liked to eat toads and fuzzy chicks, stole potatoes from the farmer and drank gasoline from a neighbor's tractor.

His breath smelled of rotten dill pickles and under all his nails lived crumbly villages of dirt. In some of these villages were ants. He was crawling with lice too, and spiders made webs in his hair.

His girlfriend was called Charlie and she was made of stone. He fashioned her from lime rock and kept her in a box in the bathroom.

One day he took her to the grass where he read aloud from a letter he'd written.

"I love you more than cake," it said, "more than thunder and more than snow."

She stared at him with a face like pavement.

"More than a hundred bees," he said, "more than all the crabs in Maryland."

He kissed her and pushed so hard his lip split open onto hers.

He loved her more than air but his house was in need of repairs, so with active hands he hacked her to gravel, took her home, and fashioned her to the walls.

At night he ran his fingers over the doorjambs and thought he felt them shiver.

- Tara Wray, "The Hermit"