Awake on the couch with a chill
deeper than the cold and damp outside
The cold and damp inside.
What rhymes with colonoscopy?
Cold alone *** copy?
Cold nose cope ***?
Time for your anxiety sir. Open wide.
I wrap a blanket around my shoulders
the way old men do to keep warm
in their wheel chairs
as someone rolls them out into the sun
like a potted plant.

Suns coming up.
I can hear Mazie panting
at the top of the stairs.
I hope she doesn’t fall
trying to walk down in the dark.
Down in the dark.
She’s very unsteady.
Losing her balance.
Occasionally she tries to run and play
chasing her lost youth like the stick I once threw.
I wonder if she fears getting old
Like we do.
Like I do.

I hear Twister shaking herself,
as if I can hear every follicle
shaking one against the other,
then jump on the bed.
She lays down in my spot
and keeps it warm for me.
Such a kindness to faithfully keep one spot in this bleak, coldness warm just for me.
I look in her eyes sometimes and see
All the sadness
All the hope
All the trust
All the love
All     that     matters.

I’m not sleeping very well
Up every hour or three to ***
Or waking to worry
about money, health, life or love,
or the eminent lack thereof
of all of the above.

Rob asked me about Melodie
It’s odd because Rob and I never talk
And here I am
having a more intimate conversation with him
than I do with Melodie.
He asked me why I never mention her
I told him there was nothing to say.
That there was little between us.
What an odd way to describe not being in love.
“Little between us”.
As if love were a kind of space
or a cushion
a nook
or a cranny
a fence
a wall
an ocean
a deep, echoing chasm
or a bed.

Love is a kind of space.
A sacred space.
A sacred, funny, crazy, maddeningly,
painful, life threatening,
perfectly imperfect space.
A space in which to be held and hold
A space to be well... loved?
A space in which to be well loved.
A space in which to be well.
A space in which to be.

Remember that line from the movie “Alien”?
In space…no one can hear you scream.