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The Wires of the Night
I thought about his death for so many hours, tangled there in the wires of the night, that it came to have a body and dimensions, more than a voice shaking over the telephone or the black obituary boldface of name and dates. His death now had an entrance and an exit, doors and stairs, windows and shutters which are the motionless wings of windows. His death had a head and clothes, the white shirt and baggy trousers of death. His death had pages, a dark leather cover, an index, and the print was too minuscule for anyone to read. His death had hinges and bolts that were oiled and locked, had a loud motor, four tires, an antenna that listened to the wind, and a mirror in which you could see the past. His death had sockets and keys, it had walls and beams. It had a handle which you could not hold and a floor you could not lie down on in the middle of the night. In the freakish pink and gray of dawn I took his death to bed with me and his death was my bed and in every corner of the room it hid from the light, and then it was the light of day and the next day and all the days to follow, and it moved into the future like the sharp tip of a pen moving across an empty page.