Alive and attentive, after midnight, I guard my privacy like a miser’s money, as if it were a guilty act to search the cupboards and closets of this house for nothing of my own. The bitch crawls down the stairs, blind misery loving company to satisfy its itch, groping for eyeballs to gauge its sores, and I hide in the dust behind a creaking door until it shuffles away. The refuse of its hopes, of its regrets and dead successes, mildewed in disarray, flake apart like bark from rotting logs, and I’m an animal, curious, keen, and hungry, turning white larva to the burning light.
4 March 1979