Creaking! Central heating or her husband?
She kept eyes shut and tuned in on the sounds.
Radiator? Knuckle pop? FM band?
Perhaps her middle-ear bones. Coffee grounds
that gurgled in the drain? Sleep slipped away
and Susan gave up, sat up, switched the light on.
She wished she hadn't when she saw what lay
much on the rug and more still on the transom:
an anaconda lounging in the light.
It didn't speak, she thought, but Susan heard words
and Geoffrey wasn't anywhere in sight.
Back home, where snakes were smaller
and slurped songbirds,
had never seemed so far away. She screamed.
Would Geoffrey reappear and say she dreamed?
Amazon Night Call appeared in The Armchair Aesthete.