the orange cat, impeccably sawed in half, who keeps herself surgically groomed-- in the dying hours of sunday down, down and tucked well in, her teeth out on the table-- four times i called and heard the noise before the voice came back again...again...again. we are all here for the same thing, he'd said. we are all here to make money. does anyone disagree, he asked like a bullet aimed, his charm coming down all around him. inside a large room i once looked down.

i'm out on the street and emptied, free.

the empty street is like a vacuum. i play the zombie-part, the last one alive, so i thought or thought of believing-- out of all the many ways to say and to not say i love you, you asked that i not go scaling mountains, then you took it back. i returned to sleep like a cat laid open on the table, the rat they leave beside my bureau surgically gnawed in half. The orange cat keeps herself impeccably groomed. the grey cat bats at her food with both paws. i am alone, i say. onto the doorstep of failure: william, i need a costume. cigarette ashes fall in circles. ten thousand forgotten thimbles. a swig of whiskey in your sister's old car, your mother and father sliding on coats. we fall in two. i am curled in the chest of something where i can forget myself. i make the bed for the first time in years, startled at the ease of things. i am filling my high heels with blood-soup. do not make it dark, dear. i am shelled in flourescent lighting, counting the dropped breaths. arm in arm all the way to the zoo, truman capote goes to feed the yaks, and there is warhol by the deer cage. there i am in the deer cage, darling, relying on peripharies, leaving rings on my mother's furniture. is it back into the cringe again? i take long cold walks to offset the sundowns. girls in paper hats are twirling in the gutters of south boston while my grandmother sleeps and argues with the dead. she travels back and forth through her mind like a tricked fuse. i maintain the space ship, feed and water the cats and the space-plant. antique figurines orbit the rooms. the great piano sleeps like death, an injured lion crouched in the corner. the green leather chair days slumped in the half-door closing of it. the mighty snore of death but a whimper, a dead rat. the color coming through and coloring everything. my dear is here and gone again.