The waitress approaches suspended from above.

We were young once and we looked at the women at the bar, their gossamer dresses, hazel irises marching on, the Mississippi show stoppers; brother bending slowly upon the bar, the smoke lifts, floats to where the window is cracked and then is gone.

The women come and go often and in the morning will have been forgotten.

A girl who pulled the clouds upon her, shaped them and let them go, I know her no longer, only I know the women, she smiles and I do not remember her the way she was; warm beneath us I felt the earths feet, I desired, Europe in the afternoon calling.

The lines of our broken lives, the brocade of fall approaching. It is summer and I miss the sound of the floorboards bending beneath her pilchard toes.

China, I say china softly; sitting I see my neighbor smoking in a robe.

My legs are hesitant from all the swelling; I have forgotten the walks I would take upon the broken Kansas lawns. Can you not see the leaves as they have fallen, sitting upon your porch? The coffee smiles in the morning, the steam lifts from above, years pirouette then fall, and after all this? Yes, and after all.

I have broken so many things; the walls velvet green, let us go then you and I; as I lay atop her gazing endlessly, her soft countenance colors the tragedy of life.

Each day I await the cracking of the steps outside the door. They are calling, I stand and the door from above closes. It was nothing. Upon the green divan the curtains keep from us the hands, the arms, I draw them and it is dark out, is it getting darker, I lay upon her and dream a bit more. It is time for bed to rest our sleepy heads, do you dream as I of the night unmasked?

I awake again and the door closes. Is it I or am I the son of my father? The sililiquouy of your signs blossom within my chest; it is in your home that I am always your child.

I awake and she has not left; Sunday morning when the teapots sings of peaches. In bed, the sibilant kettle from above says ready, she saunters lazily as I pour the tea bedside next to her shapely legs.

I watch her so many mornings and then she leaves. She is graceful when she walks, I can hear her from behind the walls as she slides into my sleep, the thunder rolls along, the rain batting against the windows does not wake us, I dip her and she rises to my lips and we drift out to sea weightless.

I awake and can hear the water tumbling into the tub.

On a train to Kansas I am traveling with my thoughts, my green valise above. The barren Midwest flickers in the photographic window. Lightening flashes, the image, the moment. I am seated next to a pair of lovers.  The tracks which have folded the earth over, the modern world in a bowl. We stop and I stand on the platform watching all the trains coming and going, all the tired faces, I have forgotten where I am going; I miss her thick curling hair, her hips in the morning. The storm has yet to pass, the thunder, the days I spent walking, visiting the withering homes.