"I Miss the Treadmill Repair Guy" by Amy Lerman

For years, we greeted like lost relatives,

half-hugging before walking toward

the bedroom, a buzzing motor, pool

towels and bottled water pre-arranged 

like a celebrity’s rider. For years, he updated

on his MMA training and lost matches, above 

eyebrow scars, one Christmas after shaking 

my doctor-father’s hand, he guided fingers up-

ward, a bit left, tracing red cauliflower bumps

sprouting his ear. For years, we texted birthday 

cake and Santa face emojis, sometimes half

marathon photos, even when the warranty 

company declared loss and a new machine

while his route moved cities, then counties,

until states away. For years, I knew not eight

kids he fathered, no company truck car seat

or t-shirt jelly stains signaling life over there,

why he waited until a final belt installation

to disclose I did not question, our routine

unfettered, as we hoisted and latched from 

respective sides. For years since, I picture 

plastic, Fisher Price little people, not even

three inches high, perpetually-smiling, arms 

outstretched, maybe one dressed in pilot’s blues

or an oversized cowboy hat, settled in green, 

breezy fields, a silver dinner bell ringing them

to blue skies, fluffy clouds, a long picnic

table mounded in wooden bread and cheese

pieces, a sun that never sets.

Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris, won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest, she has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, Atticus Review, Muleskinner, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications.