These cold days when the insane sky’s clear, heat poofs away be-
yond its net of edible blue. My cat folds, flops across the laundry
steps. Flags the size of jeans pockets flip-flap affixed to rowhouse
fronts. The nicest, cleanest hands reach to switch out lights in
stores: futons, ring trays, eyeglasses, dresses, go dark. “The bed is
not very big.” Cold or no there are fathers calling mothers and child-
dren walking home or out; also those of us who are neither father
nor mother and have forgotten the complicated unchosen knits and
methods of being somebody’s child. Hires Root Beer signboard
creaking, then not creaking. This year Thanksgiving dinner begins
in the afternoon: a moist bird, venison stuffing. Window glass goes
blue-indigo. “Is this the right crockery?” Cold little birds, like knots
of twine, jam the Japanese Zelkova just outside, gabble in the light-loss
hysteria. The Dow Jones dropping. Friends’ kids leer from photos I
stuck on the refrigerator. Last night I slammed a door so hard the
mirror hung on it shattered over my back. I was not hurt; moreover
he stopped shouting back, ran in his socks onto the crackling glass,
put his arms around me?