Ladder Hours

By Brandon Mcneice

Fifteen minutes till dismissal and I am on the top rung that says do not stand here because the wind has caught the banner over the playground and the children keep asking if Honor is supposed to lean like that and I reach and feel the creak in my shoulder that arrived the day my father said he had the couch and did not and the corner dropped and dust rose and his breath went short; I remember how he fixed things with twine, the hinge on the basement door, spit, pull, pat, good, stay, and the sun hot vinyl bows against my palm as I smooth the word straight with the flat of my hand and the S hook clicks back into its hole like a tooth finding a socket and I think of the night after we sold his tools when a single gold screw rode home in my jacket pocket and I put it on my tongue because I wanted to keep something that stayed, rain and pennies and a little salt, and I say ladder hours to myself like a joke no one else would laugh at while the whistle carries from the blacktop and the backpacks bump under the banner and the ladder rocks, a small boat between gusts, and I look down and count the scuffed rungs, two minutes lost to the wind, then climb, paying the hour back in steps I can name, each one a sound the building understands.

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Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator whose work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Frog, Plough, Front Porch Republic, and The Philadelphia Citizen.