The one hour in which I can bear to hold you has now passed. She steps up from the basement, her granite lips arranged in a smile. Gratitude is forever the operative mode.
We travel west, stop to visit, and keep going until we reach the sea. It's not the city but the country in which the city is, she said, and that made me smile. Tired from so much physical labor, I fell to my knees and cried hard.
You miss the dead dogs, so what? A certain slant of light indeed. Death comes knocking and you answer the door and are surprised at such a familiar grin.
Join me in my rowboat, won't you? The beer goes down harder and harder, as the light in the window fades. Thus life for one who fears the grave.
Believes he ought to shave? He came out to say if he wanted visitors he'd have a goddamn sign out thank you very much. And yet later - after soup and over whiskey - he became tipsily eloquent and we ended up as friends. That quality.
The lights from the hotel beckoned but I kept driving, intent on Saint Louis, where we'd fallen in love, as if the site of anything mattered. We are all asleep, we are all dreaming Emily's dream. The robin smiled and it didn't feel at all like a betrayal.
For you this sentence. And for you, this promise not to go until you're ready to be alone.
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