Heavyweight
BY TOBI KASSIM
I know hard things have
their yielding places. I’ve seen
the fabricator lean into the raw
edge of slabbed earth with the weight
of his hip while his makita hummed
like a record. He swayed in time
with reggaeton off the shop radio, side
to side for friction like he found a dance
partner in stone. I press the heel of my palm
against my eyelids and see
blood veined across a century’s smooth
face. Weight of every day compacted in it.
We removed a mountaintop to reach
stone’s deep refuge. Weight of deep
belonging. Used clamps to brace the slate’s breaking
points on a metal frame. Water to absorb
debris’ dispersal off sandpaper. Dust and mist
flew in the air like music. It took grace to force
the finer particles free—I press
my palm over my eyelids for dots of light
to dance in the dark of a hard question.
I feel the drag of granite’s weight under
every day. Merril could polish a kitchen
in forty-five minutes. Why did we come back
to work and find him sprawled under
a morning’s halo of beer cans? Leftover Bud
Light’s sweetness mixed with dizzy whiffs
of mineral spirits to lift the final shine
out of the counters. He’d wake to ease back
onto the heavy machines. Cut kitchens
til sunup. Pressure wears the grit of slow change
away with pleasure. There’s no home like the glaze
over the world after I rub my eyelids
open to the uncollected softness
of the dust. A stone split breathes
particulate light, pipes the morning
mist through my pupils. The rest
of the sun descends slowly into gray
puddles ankle-deep on the shop floor.
