Winter nights are a kind of thick, scented muslin laid over the streets crushed so close together they hold in warmth like wood reverberating with the voice of Nat King Cole.

He's taking a gold brick and saying it’s too heavy to carry without even thinking of its value or all the things that can be made from it.

Waking

     I know that he was watching me while I was asleep. I had promised to stay awake, but warned that it was a shaky promise, and I woke to see scribbling and an exit. His back out the door.

     He had stared at me for an hour before he left, smoking and hating to smoke, pushing out the smoke through his lips in sharp, abrupt gusts. He decided it was better that I was there, better that he knew me, better than the plan he had once laid out for himself. He is not an artist, but he found me a muse.

     He says I mean more than I know, but perhaps sometimes he forgets, and it is more than he knows.

     I don’t know if it is my job to remind him, or his to learn not to forget.



     You are used to being alone, being alone, being alone. Then to be accompanied is a pleasant surprise. But You are used to being alone: and suddenly your kitchen has double the dishes and one lost fork. Suddenly the toilet paper disappears twice as fast, and even when replaced, it is not your brand. A travel toothbrush gathers condensation in its blue plastic case each time you shower.

     You start to look for things that have changed, suspicious, because so many do that you know that something must be wrong. You keep looking, keep looking. And then you are sick of all this accompaniment; you want to leave your pants laid out on the floor again and your cabinet doors ajar.

     And her face is still beautiful but you have seen it so much that you can hardly see it anymore. All you see are the things she thinks about and does not say, all the things she’s done and all those things you fear she will not do, all the day in and day out and days that don’t seem to belong to you anymore because she’s taking your time, she’s commandeering your friends, she’s taken all your vices and re-lit them for you with extra flame.



     Before I fell asleep I saw his eyes creased with that thinking that is only rarely punctuated with a word. It was cutting all through him; thoughts too blunt and heavy for morning (like that metal that has such weight to mass ratio that you could not lift a cubic foot of it. Lead?) I saw that look and I wanted to talk to him, but my words formed into round sounds of sleep like liquid overtaking my voice. And I did not see the look disappear, but I know the look on his face when he left was still serious-- but satisfied and decided, and hoping that he would return to find me still there like a doll on his shelf.