Strays Nobody Else Will Take

Unfortunately I don't have any answers. She pushes the sheets back, straddles you without asking, and your body responds - you're hard, you're moving in her - but you are also somewhere else, you are always "somewhere else." Dreams of Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah, his voice filling the room, my faltering scraggly own a poor companion. No wonder dogs have been the real totem, especially strays nobody else will take. Living as if there were a bargain-basement adoption fee tattooed to one's forehead. We for whom the stranger's mouth is a tabernacle. Waking early like the old days, recoiling a little swallowing coffee, foregoing scripture in favor of bird song and the strange - that expansive tremulous crystalline decidedly Christian - stillness that is fast-becoming the not-you you briefly embody. That stump stared stonily - sullenly - not stubbornly - at the sky, and I was the author of its death. The remaining hemlocks are russet when the sun rises, its rays briefly set a certain way, a loveliness in passing. Christ is not less, Christ is not more. Imagine some ground we share - that allows us to love one another quietly, fructively, actually. A bluet does not travel, therefore a bluet owns what relationship to narrative? It's settled: since sheep are complex, we will make use of a scythe. What will the world ask of you today? What strategies will you devise to avoid responding and - critically - avoid seeing clearly that strategy is your response?