Interlude #4

I think it was the gold tabby or maybe the lean black cat. Or maybe both, I can't tell. Did you have one or two cats? I cut it with my knife along its side and wrapped it in a towel and hid it underneath the bushes. He just wouldn't die. I kept crying and hoping each spasm would would be the one that would let me sleep. I tried to save his life but couldn't stop cutting. You walked inside our house holding the blue towel. I thought I'd brought it in and washed it. I thought I'd put down the knife.

Interlude #3

Grocery store, half empty, haunted, inching closer to death, smells of rot. Hanging a tuxedo in the employee area for the corpse to have something to dress himself in when metaphors fail. Walking home, chimes ring and the wind picks up and branches beat against windows and passing company becomes craven allies and fair weather friends. Midnight dalliances marking time, three to a bed but one to dance. No one ever comes when they say they will.

Interlude #2

Drawing maps, building a geography. An overpass here, a fast food drive thru menu on the side of the road boarded up and left alone, the restraurant long since faded into shrubbery faded into forest. Hints of music, a measure there and a measure there, decorate the trees like tinsel.

Interlude

Coltrane's Blue Train playing through the speakers. The dishes are being washed, the hum of water threatening to overpower and at the same time intertwine with the music. Lunch cooking on the stove top, another chime in the chord. As always, remembrances lay heavy, tainting and fulfilling, a snare and high hat girding it all. A different geography is formed from these disparate strands.