It's an afternoon with nowhere to be but home, away from the street crowded with strangers. Here in the neighborhood a woodpecker gets down to business. A fly starts and stops on the still warm window sill. The little black dog asleep on a penny twitches, wakes to bark then, convinced, curls again into sleep. And still it is afternoon.
The big dog hears something in the muted distance, rushes to the door, presses her nose on it, snorts, goes back under the table, licks a crumb, goes back to the door, then leaves the room. I hear her flop and sigh in the dark innards of the house. All is well. The afternoon begins so dim. My thoughts are like vapors, memories of memories rise and drift away. I list in the silence like a wrecked ship. Perhaps I will never cry. Perhaps, when all this is gone, there will remain one small tear hurling in its own orbit in black space.
asha
