I can hear the air burning in the furnace, but see the cold ashes fluttering in the draft. No more celebratory open fire with copper glowing and our feet propped up to the flames. This is the start of the lone times when I’ll see you later, so much later than we know.
Today we dug out your car. It could have been me that gave the plowman one hundred dollars to hold you with snow, pen you in with white drifts so large it took all morning to clear the way. The noonday sun melts your windshield. We laugh and I see the light gleaming on your teeth.
The polished mahogany rail is cool to my touch coming down, smooth like cut marble, wet with aloe vera. Potted tropical plants festoon the dining room creating candor in nooks and crannies; grottos and cubby holes of I love you and I love you not, where deals are cast and promises made and secrets revealed and sometimes traded.
Do not look to static mirrors for your reflection. You are shimmering far more than their flat surface can detect. You, who screws up your face in animation, elation, and determination, are infinitely more lovely than overly self-aware postures caught in a frame.
Your personal style is radiating grace, and happiness, and love. And when your face shatters into tears of laughter, loss, or loneliness, let pools of water be your guide as to how you really look.
Use the weather to determine your appearance. The air is dictating storm fronts and then warm days.
He is so sleek and elegant until I call him Mister Dumpling Bum and all manner of witty, kitty diminutives. He is the apple of my eye, my Pumpkin Pie. I call him Fatty Lumpkin and I don’t know why. He doesn’t cringe when I talk baby talk, he looks at me with such love. He’s both the king and court jester, chasing his tail, and looking down from above.
I found that the nothing from trying too hard, spreading too thin, is like not enough egg whites and the whole batch is flat.
I give each pearl as I find it, hopefully imperfect like that snatch of music that doesn’t keep on key, like honey bees fed weeds, like cheese that is moldy in a strangely delicious kind of way.
Today’s art is a circle of white with zero inside; a canvas of snow, a painting of very nearly clear water except for that one bubble, a kernel of an idea floating off to the side. If I add some salt and pepper