Premature Yearning
by Matt Dantes

Telephone rings and I am
seven and sleeping in my own bed
and across the way is my little brother.
He wakes up before I do and the clock
blinks red the phone bounces.
My seven-year-old legs part the sheets
and carry me to the phone and there I hear
things I don’t understand and something
about an alarm when I hear my father’s feet bounding
across his wooden floor.
Down the stairs he comes and takes the
phone from my hands and holds it to his ear. His eyes are
red and he grumbles words that I do not understand. I look
across the kitchen at the microwave light green and see
a time I’ve only seen during day. My father is no longer
holding the phone and instead has his arm around
my waist and hoists me over his shoulder and
carries me up the stairs and tucks me into my bed and
my little brother pretends that he is asleep. I hear,
some minutes later, the car start and I sit at the window
and watch my dad pull out of the driveway to do
what I thought was the greatest job in the world.


Hailing from Long Island, New York, Matt Dantes is a burgeoning poet, storyteller, pianist, visual artist, occasional bartender, and student at Adelphi University.