Pushed with both hands against the promised land. Who approached the cathedral. I read the essay on my phone. Wiping tears away with less & less subtlety. Waiting for the moment the heat shuts off at 6. The speculative nature of global geography. Was it In the Pines or House of the Rising Sun. Capsized moon over Morningside Park. Pages falling from the notebook to the floor. You walked by the apartment dominated by a large wall clock. I was in your mother’s hospital room. Trying to be a thinner membrane. Was this a memory or a dream. In the rose garden overlooking Long Island Sound. All this before the world changed. The large brown ceramic cup full of crushed ice and mint. We all pretended we were a boy becoming a man. We fantasized living in the boutique hotel. When the new millennium started in earnest. Printing up the tax records to take to the clinic. After receiving three drunk texts I thought maybe I didn’t say my husband enough. Health care a persistent low-grade fever in the system. The work has no endpoint. All the young literary men are out at the bar. Were you walking away or standing still. The day already past apex. Car horns and the sound of a plane passing over. Your summer my winter. Your morning is my night. Is there a word for the way the ghouls move down the aisle. Not walking. Not dancing. Being a stubborn and glaring stone. Having hunkered down in your refusals.