Mal says, "Don't think this'll pass, and I'll cool down and think the chill of my loneliness can be warmed by blanket of your love. Your love is a cold, salty bar rag."

"I waited by your side for months until you healed. No one else ever came to see you," cried Layla.

"Yeah, well, who asked you? Maybe I put myself in that coma for a moment of peace. Christ, you can't take a hint. And get that kid outta here. Wasn't mine, even in theory.

"And neither were you."

Anyway, after the assembly, the fourth-graders signed up for whatever instrument interested us.

"I like the saxophone!" So my parents signed me up for the saxophone.

Later, when we went to the music rental shop, I was presented with the saxophone. I was confused as it did not resemble what I thought was a saxophone. Where was that brass tube that slid in and out?

What a dumb kid! I wanted to play the trombone, but thought it was called a saxophone. I never protested, shy and passive as I was. So I learned to play the saxophone.

I never...

Mr. Marlin calls it the "war effort" though it's not a war. I see effort, but not of a thoughtful variety. Everyone involved is dressed in the same color. Any tool is a weapon. They'll be murdered, the whole lot of them.

"I told you this day would come," shouts Mr. Marlin. Imagine waiting on such a horrible day. It was only morning but the skies were growing dark. Cloudless and dark. He threw a croquet mallet at me.

I stared at it like it was a frozen dog.

The city buildings are below and the windows opening to the living rooms are windows into the soul of the city. The bookshelves, the home libraries, glow with the artifacts of their souls. I scan the horizon for those pulsars of literature, searching for life beyond the automatic.

"The river's on fire," said my son. The river did seem to be on fire, if you were only looking at the river.

"No, the sky is," I told him. A reflection from above. He shrugged his shoulders.

He didn't ask why the sky was on fire, just bowed his over over the rowboat's side and continued looking for fish. Small, darting, the color of the river bed, the fish beneath the fire, the river beneath the fire.

My eyes toward the sky, waiting for the fire to come down.

Monkey banged into the table leg. The box hesitantly tipped over, shortening its shadow. Small waves of wine sieved through the table cloth.

"That fucking dog."

We laughed, watching our evening sink into the carpet.

We were too high to be drinking anyway.

We sit in white rooms now, spartan furnishings, novel-sized windows. The tea is warm yet still melts the chocolate. Today they let us hear a bird song. The leap of its whistle reminded me of something that used to occur, when things used to occur.

She sang like a ghost in a fog.
Dew on the saxophones,
Rain on the drum kit.

The napkin read,
"Remember, it's the 1900's."

It was always almost dawn,
never fully light.

The fog never lifted,
the ghost always whispered.

The dapper man picked up a penny and found a little hole. The hole was smaller than the penny, but larger than a dime. The man, dapper and penny-wise, bent down on dapper knees, head bowed, right eye squinting into dime-sized hole.

"Dimes, dimes, dimes! Mole men flipping dimes, muddy mason jars tight with dimes!"

He wigle

There was blood on my pillow. And a tooth on the floor. And a snake in the corner, coiled around the arc of the rocking chair. The snake I don't believe had anything to do with the tooth or the blood on the pillow, but if that cold blood hadn't clicked me from sleep, opening my eyes on the tooth on the floor, I might not have rolled my eyes to the corner where the snake hugged the rocking chair. It's an old chair and probably felt the dry ribs of hundreds of snakes around its legs. But never in...