Stairs
/Angel Baker
I counted the steps to our apartment in perfectly
measured numbers like a Baker counts eggs to
ensure the bake will rise. If I’d taken the steps
wrong I’d either climb them again or wait until
morning to clean the slate. For years it was,
Take the steps starting with the right foot and
descend with the left. Alternate at some ordained
moment then change from two to three steps
at a stride. The numbers stayed in my head all day
waiting to be replicated as I went up home or
down out to school. I never tried four.
My legs weren’t long enough to do it
without using the handrail, which was also part
of the order of things. The concrete landing in
the middle before the steps turned played
into the rhythm, too. Step on it or not step on it.
Add a step on an odd day or skip on an even.
Each day had its own number but they didn’t
add onto each other. Each set was separate,
isolated, like a barcode, a fingerprint.
At the top, my father drank beer to stupor.
Sometimes awake. Sometimes he didn’t
look awake at all. At the bottom, school,
neighbors, poetry of structure. Mother
living in her car somewhere. The game
was a strategy — chess even — to move
through numbers in a controlled way.
Rook takes Knight. Rook takes Knight.
Rook takes Knight. Over and over
until all manner of Knight’s death,
premeditated, had been exhausted.
Then to a more skilled move.
Bishop protects Queen.
Black and white board underfoot,
secured and steady in position.
The slatted stairs hanging over
matured cacti — pachypodium and euphorbia —
bird of paradise, June bugs drowning in the pool.
Angel M. Baker is a writer and English Instructor in California. Her first short story, “A Summer Story,” was published in the creative non-fiction section of the Eastern Kentucky University journal. She was a Poet of the Month for MoonTide Press and received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2019 for her poem, "Vista, California." She also has published poems in The Northridge Review and New Plains Review. Her critical analysis of modernist techniques in Yonnondio and Johnny Got His Gun was published in Associate Graduate Students in English Journal in 2021.
