hic vigilans somniat
In the night, as I move through a crowded back street, I get a message from someone who used to be a friend but is now, after much time and distance, nothing more than a vague acquaintance. “I need your help.” A few minutes later I walk into a one-room bar that barely qualifies as a place of business, let alone… Continue reading friend in need
A kitchen, a house in the country — dry and dusty, very little greenery. A little boy with dark hair and a baby face sits at the kitchen table playing with an old wooden birdhouse. I see a yellowjacket crawl sluggishly over the back of the birdhouse. Inside I see the telltale paper comb covered with more yellowjackets. I shout… Continue reading danger
Walking through the office I hear — or I think I hear — my son’s voice, very distinct and clear, call to me. I look back down the hallway but, of course, no one is there.
Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees… Continue reading a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated June 16th, 1998] ...and, somehow, in my dreams I hear a huge crash — metal and glass — ignoring it, I dream on... ...a flickering light from outside — flash of orange through the blinds — send me up to the window, women’s voices, laughing and talking . .… Continue reading flames, new and old
…and in my dream it is a lion that circles and follows me—a savage pet that, inexplicably, had made us his family… …I see a screen door opening and closing, sweeping its shadow across the afternoon light… …I see a four poster bed in a sea of boxes, an island of bitter regret… …I see my son.