Emperor to Empress

Out of many troubled dreams comes an inclination to be gentle, peaceful with others, and yes, receptive. What can be done, Emperor to Empress? It's a spiritual sickness, those coils at your throat, that ringing in your ears. He wrote, concerned that the space around him was shrinking too quickly. Reliance on metaphor is a symptom of avoidance. Take what from there, from that?

Looking ahead, Tuesday was bad which meant the whole week wasn't good. Those who demand the sentence bear water for the paragraph are doomed to wet chins. She recognized her tribe and it wasn't at all like coming home but like falling a great distance to the same place from which you'd started. I said to her after, outside the parrot store, weeping on my knees like a penitent, but how did you earn that wisdom? The river came down from the mountain being somewhat in the nature of a prayer. What will you think about in the moment of your death?

Commercial overtones haunted everyone, particularly repeated use of the word "product." Oh ye of such variegated faith, why do your hands flutter like a bird? In snowbanks, wholly veiled moons, and bottles of alcohol lined up like little children. Inside its armor, the monkey was capable of shape-shifting, first made of crystal, then burnt sugar, then a handful of sodden grass from the pasture. A faceless Jesus stood at the end of a long hallway saying "I'm only a word, only a word." All throats clear in a preparatory way.

And I dreamed of you again, as you had been in the old days, the Albany days, and saw you age as in the world you must have, becoming not the woman I loved but another woman. At last then I am split open, all bitter and raw, a fresh cut lemon voluntarily on the altar.