Intermission.

These days, I have been looking down more than up.
Reality is a cloak of dust; I have no time, and hardly any inclination, to wipe
it off and see the monsters and angels and enchanted caves and the army of the
possible waiting to sprout wings. There is no reason to feel exaltation, dismay,
extravagant rage. My movements are tiny and simple. It is as it should be, for
now.

I would like to think that I am
done with wildness. The showers of sparks I used to run after have finished
falling, and I cannot tell them apart from the soil that presses itself into the
soles of my shoes. The bells are obedient. The voices are muted. I am done with
fireflies dancing semaphores in the rain.

It is the loneliness of one street after
another, blurring into one building after another, the gray procession to a
wordless horizon.