Ron Tobey: YOU SLEEP UPSTAIRS • Cleaver Magazine

Ron Tobey
YOU SLEEP UPSTAIRS

The annual flood of green from West Virginia’s vast Appalachian forest drubs me senseless. I feel lightheaded. I check my Fitbit. Why does my blood oxygen level drop? My mortality, I wonder.

At midnight, the rain slips off the ridge peak, settles, as a hen fluffs, spreads her nether feathers, wiggles a little dance, nests upon our hollow.”I lie in bed from two-thirty to four-thirty in the morning, listening to her contented cackling drip off the eaves of our log cabin.

You sleep upstairs in the guest bedroom. The foam mattress is better for your hip and leg, injured when trailering your horse, but the ache keeps you awake. Frequently, you pace in staggered rhythm the plank floor boards above me that creak like crickets. Outside, the remnant of June’s fireflies rises into the steamy clouded night sky. I worry you will become confused, fall down the stairs. It’s not a good summer. I had forgotten I love you.

Ron Tobey grew up in northern New Hampshire, USA, and attended the University of New Hampshire, Durham. He and his wife live in West Virginia, where they raise cattle and keep goats and horses. He is an imagist poet, expressing experiences and moods in concrete descriptions in haiku, lyrical poetry storytelling, recorded poetry, and in filmic interpretation. He occasionally uses the pseudonym Turin Shroudedindoubt for literary and artistic work. Ron is active on Twitter, where he announces publications, discusses projects, posts personal notes and photographs, and converses with other poets and writers. His Twitter handle is @Turin54024117. Ron’s flash fiction piece “You Sleep Upstairs” was a finalist in Cleaver’s 2022 flash contest.