And then things stopped for no reason at all. Before days haunted the worldspace snared between
then and now. The fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation

of the brownstone facades in the light, which hid hope of something beyond that place and time.
The instruments were secret, the blood too; electric music boiled in the next room like soggy root
vegetables—the moment digestible as a news bulletin filling a vacancy

in the void-shaped present. The future unwound the way it always did. Boring. He drilled in to
his crossword, the man stopping this moment like the ink was impermanent, the pool prepared,
pages turning. Three empty seats in the living room. Six around the dinner table. Guess how
many seats were filled. Complete works of whoever gilded the untouched bookshelf, remnants of
an earlier passing on. Nothing happened, however, worse than

morning.