The knife sharpening man comes down the street in his blue truck with paintings of various knives all over it. He clangs on his horn that sounds like two blades clashing. The back doors to his workshop on wheels are open, revealing small and larrge drawers filled with various tools, he has a workspace that is as small as it is meticulously organized. All the colors have been time-dulled. He smiles at me where I sit on the stoop, a sad faced girl child with a flowered pink dress, too much hair, black socks. The sun has come out, an older and very overweight man with stains on his shirt and poorly buttoned suspenders walks down the road with a reusable grocery bag that has an enlarged picture of blueberries on it. We are all too far away and apart, I don't even know who to talk to anymore.

I sit on the couch and braid all of rachel's hair into thin rows, pinning each one carefully to her scalp. Lendl and I drink water to rinse away the wine, talking about the cards laid out on the table, inventing our own expertise. Long walks to the park to ward off thoughts of old age and loneliness, looking in store windows to see what we sell now that our world has been itemized and priced, has been reduced to selling. We call this art. Somewhere, philosophers chide themselves for indolent hours trying to explain the mess were in. Maybe it's linguistics, maybe the way this community is structured, maybe it is effected by each individual at the cellular lever. I believe in you and your masks, the way you understand gesture and the lies you tell when you lie. The way, sometimes, we don't even matter to each other. How cold we are, and how warm. Even long arms fall short, and memory. Pride coming up to the shins, just to take us down, grab us from below. Afternoons of laying across the bed waiting for sleep to overtake the afternoon, waking up to the cool air on my throat when tears from the sad thought working itself out while I'm not there to mitigate my own processes have blocked the passages from lung to nose. Heat comes on when it decides not to rain. Kerouac was a typist, someone says, out of jealousy. Must have been me.