It’s dark. A place
is set for breakfast,
or it’s left over
from last night
where it wasn’t used.
One car speeds down
the one way street.

The radio
spins a song about
Sally, who is now a cop
but used to be a soldier
and witnessed a massacre
back then.

I’m not really listening
to this one. I wasn’t listening
before it started, to be honest.
Massacres bore me when they are
somewhere else. There are love songs
that bore me equally, to be
equally honest. I prefer
instrumentals, to be brutally honest —
I don’t have to wring my hands
and fret the meaning or step out
and do a damn thing. To be
savagely truthful I am
too frightened to move much
beyond the couch or the doors
to the outer world. Massacres
abound out there, after all.

Another car turns down, speeds down
the one way street. I turn to see
dawn light between the slats
of the blinds. Dawn here,
perhaps a last dawn? I shrug
it off. It’s terrifically silent
for a moment
and then the radio comes on with
“Blue Bayou”
and wistfulness fills the dark room;
I shrug it off yet again. Sally
was a cop, dreams come true
on the bayou, the world moves
through its terror and here I am
alone in a scary day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T