I was stuck inside on the night it snowed in the middle of August — yeah, it piled up in the road — and I was staring out the window. I walked out and closed the screen door behind me as I left the scene. I was off in search of headlights. It was after midnight when under the stars and not too far, I stood in the middle of Powell Boulevard and hoped they'd run me over, wished they'd run me over with all their cars.

I dropped the wait for winter's ending, and when it arrived it had shown up too late. By then my only friend had left through the garden gate. Some think so much of belated fashion, but straggling summer just finds me irate. I own one scuffed pair of sneakers while the girl's got skates.


I was searching for coins in the flashlight beam. They'd pay for my European dreams — yeah, they'd fund my operation, the one where I amputate my heart and bronze it in the name of art.

I had a sense of humor, but that muscle's like a tumor ever since she called, phoning in to retire. Man, I felt like phoning in dead on my side of the wire. I spoke what I was thinking, but hope was quickly sinking like a cement tire on a truck that's crashed into the lake.

I'd felt like begging, "Oh, can't you wait a little longer before you hang up, though i've nothing to say? Not a single word unspoken is left today. It's not as if you're lacking topics, so can't you just pretend I'm Michelle Lamanet and we're talking as if skies weren't so gray?"

Soon I found myself outside her house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, and the windows were all shuttered. Up in her room I saw a silhouette. My heartbeat doubled, tripled — castanets were crashing in my ears, and all that I could hear was an old melody:

"Oh, your toes and oh, your nose. When you arrive, the night it glows. Your eyes they are flourescents, your eyes they are flourescence upon the snow."

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