The Old-Fashioned Way

by Lannie Stabile

Phil liked to do things the old-fashioned way. When his lawn needed water, he spent hours standing outside with the hose nozzle, waving it back and forth like a wand in the palm of a slow and steady wizard. It was more personal than the automatic sprinkler his ex-wife Dorene had wanted to install. More intimate. And he was certain his grass appreciated this special attention and therefore grew lusher.

There was a perfectly good dishwasher squeezed between two lower cabinets in Phil’s kitchen—another purchase insisted on by Dorene before she left him—but he never used it, preferring to soak and scrub and rinse by hand.

And at the grocery store, Phil would stand in front of the pyramids of fruit and vegetables for upwards of 45 minutes, squeezing the avocados and knocking a bony knuckle against the watermelons. He could hear an echo of Dorene’s voice hurrying him, but a man simply could not trust his produce in the hands of another.

So when the city came and sprayed a big red x on the old oak in his backyard, saying they’d be back next week to chainsaw it down, it was natural for Phil to head out to his shed and grab an axe.

Patiently and methodically, in the stillness of a mid-week afternoon, he hacked away at the oak.

Although he misjudged the angle of the notch cut and the tree fell prematurely, pinning him to the ground, Phil did not panic. He did not call out, knowing his immediate neighbors were still at work. He did not think about damaged organs or possible internal bleeding.

He did, however, shake Dorene’s exasperated sigh from his imagination, rest his head on the lush and appreciative lawn, and wait for the sound of the neighborhood speeding up.

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is out now with ELJ Editions. Her newest poetry collection, The Inconvenience of Grief, is now out with Animal Heart Press. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile.