I’m at home in late summer
When the sun sits on the slim horizon
Cloaked in a ripe royal purple
Like a wise old woman rocking
On a porch in Ohio, wearing
A smile and an arched eyebrow.

From this window lights washed on black
Are nearly seasonless and forgetting,
Save the unmistakable smell of cool air
And the crackle of a leaf falling into darkness.

A few lines and a slight stirring in the soul
Inviting life to saunter in, turn on the lights—
Soft lights, warm lights—
To sit down beside me won this weathered sofa,
Ask that I please call her Vita, and take a hard look,
Breathing deeply with her head lowered
Before asking me where the hell I’ve been so long.

Vita decided not to berate me and cracked the turntable on instead. She’s got a wicked sense of everything, you know, and stunning taste in jazz. And so she dropped a record on—some calming, beautiful, wonderful thing—and in doing so reminded me of all the loveliness with names I’ll never know, which left me standing heavily in a library full of pulpy unread books.

She sensed my wistfulness instantly. For the moment I felt it rise and smother everything, I heard a cork pop in the kitchen and the sound of wine glasses pulled from the cabinets to the counter.

“You’ve been lost, have you?” she baited, giving voice to thoughts my mother never does.

I nodded, meekly, truly and recalled a sense of drowning, which I remembered feeling almost painlessly—more the way I’d always thought of passing out in the garage with the car running, quietly and without a final sign of fight.

I almost wanted to go back there, pull the water over my head again, hush the notes rising in my throat. Like the instant after the alarm goes off, the half a second when a dream can be reclaimed and the day left waiting—if only for another minute—at the doorstep kicking his boots in the dust.

Vita wears the most fantastic sweaters, which, of course, she knits herself. She has extraordinary laugh lines spreading from the corners of her eyes. Her fingers are long and slender like boughs with a gift for the piano. I’ve hardly just begun to look at her and notice how she’s changed when my eyelids start to dip, close. Sleep unfolds.

Sometimes productivity is the least productive thing of all.

Once upon a time cacophony reined inside this brain,
Before focus staged a coup and ousted pain from power
Whispering, “Shhh, baby, it’s okay” and lead me here.
Now when night comes, my secret symphony
Is marching half-assed round the block with picket signs,
Demanding better pay and better hours,
Which leaves me in this hollow space, silent,
Afraid to make a note of some imagination,
Lest I lose track of time, stay up too late,
Wander off into the periphery.

Above a leaf breaks from a tree audibly
Under the weight of dew,
Sways its way to ground like a bow
Pulled across the strings of a violin—
A sudden orchestra resounds
Around it in homage, for death
Is beautiful and colorful and honest.