We eat dinner together,
discussing the houseplants.
Is tonight a good night to give the dog a bath?
No, we decide. It’s a little too late.
Almost bedtime.

I change you into your pajamas,
and you resist.
You’ve been rebellious tonight,
trying out your independence,
walking around in it.

Daddy does bedtime:
it’s an easy one, you go right down,
and the whole world gleefully burns.

401 miles away
The oft handled Ceremonial Old Testament has already been presented, the rituals completed, and the ancient book returned to its resting place where it will wait to again be summoned.

The plans are laid and known by those present,
But let’s not talk about work, shall we?
The imagination fails to conjure limitlessness
As anything other than a yawning mouth
A ravenous, bottomless black hole.
The breadth of all Earthly treasure under the kingdom of heaven is laid before the expanding emptiness and
consumed
Consumed
Consumed.

The guests will remember this night for the rest of their short, comfortable lives.
The bounty of life, so plump and sweet, available to them each in perpetuity;
Yet how dreary, wouldn’t one say, to possess only one’s own life, own liberty, and so forth.
Thrilling to **** but so messy!
But then ah, to control the very right to existence while the people still live;
to hold their beating heart in one’s sweaty palm?
Exquisite.

I receive a text from Devin.
I ask them if they need anything from me.
We touch on the usual things and I miss them terribly,
Brokenhearted and blind with rage.

You are powerful, I say to them.
You exist.

And the band plays on as the demons feast on souls in Hell and the mausoleums lay cold and gray and still.