Demand

By morning, the trees are slick with rain, cold October Monday cringing at commuters along Main street, on their way to Albany for another day of pushing paper. She writes of heartbreak, four decades of ache returning to their familiar swansongs, they arrange their fatal patterns and ready themselves to strike. You wish you could protect her body from the blows, but she opens her arms to welcome them, and it is not your maze to navigate. You vow to move differently on your own. 

Eventually the coffee sinks in, the quiet Victorian house stretches itself into action. You eye the to do-list, wonder what matters. Turn the heat up in the old iron vents, and think perhaps it will tell you on its own.