Familiar

Did you come here with Tonya Harding?
a third person at the party asks. For a third time
I answer, No, no, I’ve been married for sixteen years.
I may look like a parasite, but in reality,
or in a more charitable light,
I’m my wife’s symbiont, a blind
ungainly alien battening to her shoulder
as the karaoke gets rolling
and we search for the door. Sometimes,
in dreams, I forget to be anyone at all,
but this time I’ve come here as myself.

Parasitos in Greek meant dinner guest, maybe
the kind who comes over a lot and always brings
a bottle of something no one else will drink.

If not a symbiont, then a familiar,
the witch’s cat that lets itself be petted,
follows her around, then curls up for a nap
when she’s gone to work, folds her laundry
and when she comes home
tells her about whatever it’s been reading.









Roy White is a blind person who lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with a lovely human and an affable lab mix. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, BOAAT Journal, Kenyon Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere, and he can be found on Twitter at @surrealroy