Solitaire

Vincent Miller

This house creaks differently after midnight.

Still settling after thirty years, shifting

In the wind. Sleep, these days, avoids me

like a plague.

Restless, I catch faces in the shadows off

the porch. This house is too big now, the doors

too wide. I flip the next card. Nine of spades.

I’d like to believe that at some point in solitaire,

chance ends and skill begins. I try developing

strategies, following systems, instilling my

wisdom between flips of the cards.

I move a column left, begin guessing the odds.

It ends, as usual, with a flp flp flp, cold random

fate reasserting its hold. I win now and then. 

The house still creaks.