Jesus your life is a disaster. I swear you are always walking a tightrope.

Not a tightrope, I say. A trapeze.

I get it, he says. One crisis to another, flying between them, back and forth. You twist and turn and never get anywhere.

Yeah yeah, I say. You should talk.

And you work without a net. And me, I’m one of those clowns in the ambulance who jumps out with a stretcher and trips over it while the crowd laughs.

You should bring a shovel instead, scrape me off the floor.

Naw. You never fall. That’s the amazing thing.

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The dint of loneliness. 

She rubs her palm against the stale grease on the window, further streaking it. Though blurred, she can make out the figures across the road.

The man, the woman, the children.  He helps her onto the running board of the long black automobile, closes the door after. The children clamber into the back.

Trees shade the lawn so the grass does not grow well near the house. Just as well, since there is no one left to cut it.

Tired of the window, she moves back into the shadows of the house to wait for something.

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He lay on the cot of the Ames Shelter House and closed his eyes.

That summer’s ramble had been the last. He’d known it then and the doc had confirmed it, told him he was lucky to have lasted as long as he had.

That afternoon he’d given his bindle to a young man who’d come in asking for a blanket, given him all he’d need for surviving the streets, tools that it had taken years to acquire.

The empty locker felt like a wound, but he could lie here warm with eyes closed and travel it all over again.

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