Steven Sanchez

Tread

He helps me carry
their old hutch
into my apartment, 

but I let go
before he’s ready—
oak slides against his palm

and he winces before running
water over his hand.
He searches for splinters 

the way he looks for leaks
in a tire, air bubbles replaced
by subtle stings. He taught me

to carry heavy things
with my legs, to keep my back
firm like a handshake.

The glass panes already missing,
I remember how he’d say
it’s better to break something 

instead of someone—I can replace
windows and dishes, but never your mother.
I prayed for their divorce, 

prayed for his lungs to collapse
every time glass splintered
around his fist. I don’t pray

anymore. When he calls, I sit
by him in the hospital room
each time his lung deflates,

and the doctor shrugs, says
it’s spontaneous, as if his lung
were a tire, subject to 

hydroplanes, black ice,
and the debris we run over
every day. When he finds a bolt

in his tire, flush against the tread,
he whispers Thank God. How lucky
for tires to leak air slowly

instead of blowing out—maybe
that’s its own kind of mercy.

Steven Sanchez

Waterfowl

With the webbing torn
from his right foot,

his toes point
perpendicular to the ground

before each step like a dancer
aware of his body’s whole weight.

I tell myself he walks with grace,
that his foot isn’t limp

like a wrist. (I want to make him
powerful.) I will break him

a piece of this loaf
to swallow

before the rest of the geese
devour everything. I know,

though, that waterfowl
who live near man

fill themselves on bread
until they can’t eat anything else.

I tell myself I won’t kill him
with this one meal, 

that I haven’t starved his bones
of nutrients, that my offering

won’t contort his skeleton,
won’t twist his wrists backward

into an eternal game
of Mercy—

but when that happens,
some call it Angel Wing,

as if words can make pain beautiful,
as if there is salvation

for every harm I’ve done.