So My Landlord's Chewed Them Out

The pressure valve’s

broken. So we’ll need

to order a replacement.

It’s been over

a week and now

my husband’s left

his (conditioned) job

to watch them pull

the square panel

to the attic, push

the dust aside,

realize 

they

have a pyramidal

  doo-dad for the rapidly

swelling holes the size of flip–flops

my feet are too wet to not slip while wearing,

for the now-we’re-hauling-it-to-Lowe’s

-to-get-a-cubic-AC-unit-shaped pit

the HVAC company’s been digging,

for the circular-whir-of-the-fan-blades

-muting-the-barred-owls’-who-cooks

-for-you-hoot-shaped lump under my

mattress. I wake and my fingers pool

into puddles so ripe to pull, convect

the ink from the pen they didn’t use

to write down which part they needed

to order in the first place toward the

rising tide of my palms on the page.

So yeah . . . the HVAC company still didn’t fix our AC today, because they ordered the wrong part. It’s 91 Fahrenheit again, 77 in my house at the moment. We’re also going to have to figure out for a third time who will take off work/stay home. Lovely. Anyway, thanks to Ryan Stephen Thornton for giving me the perfect prompt to funnel my ire through:

write heat without mentioning temperature