/ all alone

I am only afraid of those injuries, accidents, horseplay mistakes that steal from you the memories that get you from day to day, hopping stones across a creek. A stroke that might make a liar of me when I say, I will always look for your face in the landscape, try to hear your voice in the understory. Maybe I would try to wink out a message, bedridden, spoon-fed, shocked by the sensation of surgical steel, whether scalpel or emesis basin, I don't know, but to not imagine not being overwhelmed with reminiscence?

Once, I actually forgot that it was impossible to feel nostalgic for a history that wasn't my own, and for days I lost weight and lost track of time and lost all critical patience, until finally I remembered I was mourning somebody else's memories.

This hotel bed where I'm sleeping now lacks for certain comforts that were once my jealous possessions. Space. I can kick out as though emerging from a failed bridge suicide, the housekeeper will enter my room, at once overcome with memories of snow angels and frost nip.

There is no faucet hooked directly to the headboard, either, and I can see why hospitality is such a break-even sort of business.

I used to be a well-seasoned veteran. Now I'm just salty.

Tomorrow, I run along the beach with an old friend.

Pirate's life is the life for me!

Ho!