*

Build a man a fire, he is warm for the night. Set a man on fire, he is warm for the rest of his life.

*

Amen.

*

The woman is gone so I have broken out in a frenzy of pacing and cleaning. Laundry is going, the fridge has been ruthlessly purged and cleaned, the floors vacuumed and washed, flat surfaces dusted and polished.

The O’Keefe&Merritt is eyeing me suspiciously.

*

I’m down with a cold, which exacerbates my loneliness and makes me snarly. Kaleb is sick, too, which sucks. His mom seems to be running on an even keel right now, for which I am grateful.

*

I am unhinged from the world.

*

How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

The Layers

Stanley Kunitz

*

It seems the requisite question.

*

I guess I’m a sucker for the golden light. And that Linda Manz.

She makes it all seem fittin’, somehow.

Like it was all meant to be.

*

The three of us been goin’ places.

Lookin’ for things. Searchin’ for things.

Goin’ on adventures.

They told everybody they were brother and sister. My brother didn’t want nobody to know. You know how people are. You tell them something, they start talking.

I met this guy named Ding Dong. He told me the whole earth is goin’ up in flames. Flames will come out of here and there and it’ll just rise up. The mountains gonna go up in big flames. The water’s gonna rise in flames. There’s gonna be creatures runnin’ every which way, some of them burnt, half their wings burnin’, people are gonna be screamin’ and hollerin’ for help.

See, the people that have been good, they’re gonna go to Heaven and escape all that fire.

But if you been bad, God don’t even hear you. He don’t even hear you talkin’.

*

*

 

And while I’m at it…..

 

 

*

 

Namaste.

***