This is wee, the hour. I play coy with sleep, thinking that if I ignore it and feign that I am fighting it, it will engulf me out of spite. But no. Its navigator plies me with pages from afternoon fades, jukes in studied loops. Sheep have gone out of style, I think.

Down here, tonight, on the green ground, it's quiet and still, vacuumed. I look up, by chance, to test for rain. The darkening clouds sail, like a float of smoke. A diamond of dirty gulls rides the breeze, like flying M's, and I fancy I feel feather fluff and whoosh of wings

I was one for Drama, but the frame was the thing. I wanted only to be the swelling strings, the muted xylophone, the kettle drum tympanic. I would whip the most mundane into the unforgettable. Make you think your sadness into music. All in allegory of our mad desires.

She felt like a foot with uniform toes. Something to cover, but familial to her apartness. In her years, she picked up tools both shiny and showy, but of the wrong life. Fools’ gold, valued as real, was lost on her. Untrainable. Mulish, they said. Others of us knew differently.