At Mr. Milkman's
a memory of a dream of someone else's memory
He knocks on my door and I can see no reason not to scream, so I don't. It's only the milkman, I think, I have no reason to be afraid. So I didn't. I didn't afraid and I didn't be. But boy did I listen.
I listened so hard that even though he was already stood on the other side of the door by now patiently waiting for a reply, I managed to hear the clink-clink-clinking of the bottles of milk he was toting up my steps in his milk-bottle-toter a few moments ago.
I listened harder and heard his car door slam shut, his car unpark, and himself drive off back to the last delivery he made to the neighbors two houses last. I listened hard enough to hear him tell Mrs. Martin about how proud he was of his boy for hitting the last homerun of his little league game the night prior, and how she ought to be proud because her young Julie was the spitfire up-and-comer that pitched it to him.
I listened a bit harder and I heard the row he got into with a belly-heavily pregnant Mrs. Milkman this morning over how he forgot to save a bottle for themselves again and she was just fiercely hormonally devastated that she couldn't make him their Tuesday morning pancakes without it.
The last thing I managed to listen to before it all quieted out on me was just how badly Mrs. Milkman’s snoring has gotten, what with the extra people-producing pounds she's put on on account of her producing a people as of late, and how the milkman has not been getting very much sleep at all.
Before I can listen back in on the now, the milkman has already picked up my five dollars from underneath last week's bottle like I leave out on the stoop every week, and left the teat-fresh order next to the spoiled one before sauntering across the street.
♡ Hal