A door like any other:
Off-white and primer cling to oak;
A brass hinge bound like Christ to drywall.

A door seen on a morning commute;
Stewart’s early walk down the hall,
Out to a drizzly realm of cloud and memory.

Calligraphy on parchment,
Podiatry practiced by a former father:
A Dr. Pipes whose spouse once called him Stewart.

Another day of sickness and health,
Recovery and relapse in regard to the feet,
Another day of studying soles,

Of hearing souls that haven’t perished.
“Kenny’s just fine, he just got back from France,”
Testaments to Stewart whose boy was stuck behind a door in a hall.

Prescriptions to the elderly,
Stewart writes one for Rustin Shackleford;
The elusive pseudonym for one Dr. Pipes,

Whose oxycodone had worn off from the night before.
A handful of pills, bitter as Hell,
Blurring Stewart’s vision and warping his home,

A house which bounced around him,
His eyes glazed from the painkillers.
A ringing, distant at first and then near,

Undoubtedly Laura, his wife by law,
A stalker by definition, seeking justice
For the son she once had.

Stewart could practically smell the liquor,
A putrid vapor leaking out with cursewords
Supplemented by her new lover taking advantage of the grief.

He hangs up as always, saving some vulgarity for the morrow.
Stumbling down the hall with an ichor of blood and hallucinogens,
Reaching out for the doorknob and turning it and

Collapsing into the toy room.
Arranged in the reminiscence of Colby, his son,
A memory replenished with the intake of the O.C.’s.

Dr. P was afraid of fire.
Colby shared the pyrophobia, resulting in screams
That filled the house as Stewart made it out alive

And his wife wept over the ashes
Once named Colby Scott Pipes;
A sort of catalyst in the life of Dr. Stewart.

As Stew found a house, Laura found a lover,
A faceless body used to fill the gap left by her lost boy
With lust and sexual energy directed in spite at Dr. P.

Stewart has no soul
Stewart has soles to tend to,
Healing the feet of the living by day and

Playing with toys by night,
In the play room for his son, arranged ex post facto
And funded by a practice of podiatry.