Not Making Heads or Tales

             Winter Diary … 1/2018

      I broke your heart with the back of my mind
                     — from a John Hiatt song

The wipers are frozen to the windshield. I chip & chip. Nothing. Ice, still falling. Mid-twenties today. Exhaust rises as I let the truck warm up. That should do it.

Inside, the fire is enough. My empty cup on the hearth begs a bit more, but two is plenty. Down the hall, I hear the Chromatics are on tv. Must be the Roadhouse. Something about shadows and last time and driving.

From the window, a few mourning doves, refuse to let go their spot, huddle on the weeping cherry's bone branches.

The world we think we know isn't the world after all. Sometimes silence is a gift. Sometimes it's the only say we have. But there is the implied, the unsaid. I dreamed a séance class in Honors Hall. The teacher wanted a smoke, and said, “Walk with me.” And I did. We crossed the quad. In the dream I loved his long coat.

Ghosts drift the room as if a reckoning were underway, and I'm fine with that. “It has to be.” I'd eat those words if I could — their tale & plot & landscape or hurt — grind them down with my back teeth, then swallow to keep them hidden, but they'd only sprout in my belly.

The cab must surely be warm by now. Weather channel says the skies should clear by tomorrow. Doesn't matter. This road goes nowhere.