WHEN IT’S SUNNY THEY PUSH THE BUTTON
and the sky through the oval aperture above your head in the form of light that bounces a little then rests on the curved walls and also in the form of whatever colors you can see and maybe if you’re lucky clouds pours through maybe it’s obvious and peacefully alien like a young nun walking past the local establishments in a university town in summer where it’s always despite the superficial change

A Day at Work or How My Brain Slowly Decays
Dead Men Walking – 9am Lowered faces, hallowed eyes, and heavy sighs as people collapse into worn mustard yellow office chairs. Microsoft “Welcome” music sings in almost-unison as computers start. Some carry tall, grande and venti cups of coffee. Others, without the time and patience, make their way to the kitchen to fix bitter (free) coffee from Sumatra (labeled from same coffee shop). I add three hazelnut-flavored creamers to mine. Nick, one of our bosses, stands at the center of the rows, hands clasped. He’s a charming Italian guy who started working here after me and got promoted o

Early Years
Our bicycles on a dirt road weaving between trees trying to beat the sun home You laughing hard like the letter K pause to cross string fingers Pray your big brother doesn’t know his baseball cards are in our spokes Mosquito bit legs pump in unison My blue jacket flapping in the wind © 2009 Massiel Ladron De Guevara

This Is What You Left Behind
This is the house. Those are the plants you asked be planted around the tree in the front yard, though it’s true that they never lived as long as you hoped they would. So we replanted them every year and I continue to do so, mostly out of habit though also out of a desire to make things pretty and nice and inviting, suggesting that the person who lives inside is not some sort of serial killer, is in fact the kind of man you’d not be afraid to go home with if you met him at a bar, or at the Sun Valley Mall, or when he volunteered inside the snack shack at the Little League games, though he doesn’t have any kids. This is the front door. I’ve rep

Thread
At your place I find no hesitance to kick up my heels, place my hair in a bun and get on my knees; find the absentminded string that abandoned its brothers on the side of the Oriental rug and pull pull pull watch it unravel, hoist the rug up so I watch the thread weave its way from the matting and afterward drape it in a wide “O” on the teak wood floors, admire your photos and paintings of fine dining abstractions hanging at such precise angles for the sun to catch its rays in late afternoon and gleam gold and orange and reflect the gatherin