10/15/22

This, the trembling. This, the mastication of a gnaw, great blankets of humming teakettle bubbling from world's end to world's end. There is no sunlight now; only the moon's heavyhanded lift grazing stucco walls, neighborhood bars just past close, the patio empty, the beer cans crushed and tossed onto the concrete; patio plants overflowing lush summer green, ashtrays blooming still with dying embers, the scent of smoke waft. Just blocks away my wife sleeps in snoring still. Her chest rises with the coming sun, her dreams bank across a river of memories misremembered. On the couch three cats' breathing heave, their slumber uninterrupted by the haze of streetlights crept through windowglass, smeared nicotine prints shrouding. Stumbling, crust-eyed in the early dark. What it feels like to be between life and death, or so one could imagine. Thoughts cascade past some threshold, inebriated futures imagined in the past; a life worth living, and maybe this is it. Some sort of optimism rolling justly across my body, naked in the hue of yellowed lamplight, the wall sconce flickering above the bar my parents passed down to me, my parents who are now and will always be three hours away. A phone call is always nice, and their voices lilt in my head, and the traffic spins outside, tires splashing puddles of freshrain gathered from the prior night's storm. Something is inside, and it cannot be described in any other way than a touch of cool refreshment, a tickle of shiver in the birth of another day. A morning of hope, as it will be, as it has been, as it is, and my wife sleeps in snoring still and the three cats' breathing heave; the streetlights flick and then steady against the warming summer air. I open the window, allow birdsong inside, occasional peeping strum. Open the fridge, go ahead. It's empty. Trying our hardest during the day doesn't matter when you don't have to try at all now. Slippers strewn across the living room floor, an umbrella I won't use hanging on the doorknob. I imagine the way the rain will soak through. Maybe I'll wear a jacket. Empty Pepsi bottles on the coffee table. I should recycle them. There's a scent here, not the ashtrays anymore but the air gathering fresh, sitting along the walls. There's one decoration in the room. It's a triptych of our wedding day, and in the storm I now remember what I missed back then.