winter's end no weekend no morning

The Sun is up in the sky here more in winter than in any other time of the year. I wake up from a dream about making up a broken promise to a friend, thinking, “I should tell Anthony I’m going to miss his birthday.” The room is mine. It’s hardened in the winter time. Each of its 19 corners are heavy; irremovable, like dots of ink on something clean. The walls would fall otherwise. I would freeze otherwise. The alarm sounding from just beside my head is fingers tapping on an Indian drum, outside of a store in somewhere Arizona, where in the same city an old man spends the remaining days before his last days crusading in a truck around the desert seeking plastic making as if free, trying life for the first time. The chip wrappers don’t eat or defecate and find no place to fit in (in servant wind), so the old man cleans up after the RVers, taking them into his brown bag. There, wind blows the hair of the girl tapping on a tiny Indian drum. The tapping on a little drum… won’t stop from there.

Two hours after the time I had wanted to get up, I had gotten up. I had put on clothes to stop shivering. I had turned on the heater at my feet near the desk and sat in the chair. Across the house, the door opens and the chime chimes thrice. My room is dark still. The curtain was closed by me the prior night. What was I doing? Afraid someone would see what I was doing?

I put on Jerry’s shirt that he gave to me on the night before I left Portland. Open the curtain, blue sky was above the high, sun-covered building. Some older people had already finished a round of tennis matches with friends. I was reminded of getting up early everyday to spend my time full as black cake and of becoming famous.