Abandon Ship! by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

I can’t stay here any longer.

I can’t live like this.

With you.

All you do is sit there in your underwear and drink

and write dirty poems

that get rejected.

Or you sleep all day

while other men work.

You don’t like my cooking.

You don’t have to say anything,

I can tell.

And you never talk to me

anymore.

You just sit there in the dark.

Drinking, and arguing with the walls.

You think I’m sleeping in the next room,

but I can hear you at all hours.

I can’t live like this.

I won’t do it any longer.

I tried to get the Rubik’s cube to work,

but the colours wouldn’t

stay together.

Well,

aren’t you going to say

anything?

I tossed the Rubik’s cube on the couch

and went to the fridge

for a beer.

More drinking,

that’s your answer for everything,

drink, drink, drink.

Well, I won’t have it anymore.

She grabbed her suitcase by the door

and slid on her sandals.

Just as the rats

of a sinking vessel

abandon ship,

I’m out of

here.

Does that make you a rat?

I asked

pulling my head out of

the fridge

to peer around

the corner.

   

But she was already gone

and there was nothing

left to do

but

wonder.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, The Rye Whiskey Review, Outlaw Poetry Network, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.