A Whispery Sound the Mail Makes

Who pulls into McDonald's where years ago Dad would have me pull in after one of our afternoon-long drives through north-central Massachusetts, ending in dinner in a parking lot, eating listening to NPR in the car, wondering what saves any of us. Seagulls this far west speak to the human influence on coastal - and far inland - ecologies. Smudges on the door.

Too tired for sex but then not tired, or rather willing to overlook tired, sensing in the other a need that one longs to meet, a longing that reaches well beyond the body. Talkative cashiers not exactly welcome on this morning where I'm working through one of von Foerster's thornier essays and just about getting it. Yellow light. Among the many secrets to fine scrambled eggs, the two most essential are beating them a long time with a good whisk and starting with a really hot surface. 

Reading the Washington Post at 5 a.m., too tired to pretend prayer is more important. Biden/Harris signs appearing like blue mushrooms after rain, joining the many exotic Trump displays, helpfully reminding me we are in a political and not - or at least not only - a religious crisis. It was a good year for gourds. Ceramic plates make a certain sound against one another being washed. 

How cavernous she becomes in those moments, an animal, alien, crouching over me giving me head, then straddling me, grinding, her head low, hair swinging in moonlight streaming through an east-facing window, guttural moans deepening as my thumbs reach her nipples. A whispery sound the mail makes opening. I can't sleep anymore when it rains and so sit up for hours on the downstairs couch, alternately reading Moby Dick which Sophia leaves around and watching 80s sitcoms which the culture recycles in an effort to sell me stuff that doesn't heal - but deepens - this new, this familiar, terror. Green tomatoes sliced thin and fried with onions in butter with salt. 

Birch leaves yellowing. Blue jays in the apple tree at dawn, on the woodpile, the mailbox.

I am blind because you do not see me with sight, an injustice to us both.

Pickup trucks with busted appliances in back, a reminder of something lovely which I can no longer name. Forgetting precedes apace, a million blessings cascading into one, nameless.