Might Keep Her Warm. Might Not.

The blonde woman smokes in the doorway, out of the wind. It's still not as cold as it's going to be yet, but the wind carries hints of what's to come, a chill foreshadowing of doom.

She squints at the smoke, thin cigarette pinched in her fingers, lips pursed in disapproval of the world. Whatever she sees, it's not enough, or too much, or she just wishes it were doing something else, burning, maybe.

Good Night

The apartment is quiet after we turn off the television. There's no stirrings downstairs, where we will occasionally hear them watching a movie, or upstairs, where our elderly neighbors keep the hours of the old and seem never to sleep, pacing late into the night on unknowable errands.

Katie climbs into bed and lays on her back, breathing, eyes closed. The cat, seeing us settle in, jumps down off the bed with an ungraceful thump, off to her usual haunts, and our home begins its journey through the darkness, a small oasis of peace.

Attention to Detail (Taking Things Too Seriously)

I'm cleaning up after a long afternoon of beer making, wiped out and fretting about all the things I'm sure I did wrong. You'd think that it would be easy, just following directions, but it requires concentration, and there are so many points where one can screw up, potentially ruining a batch and wasting hours of work.

"I'm sure you did fine, and even if you didn't, it's a learning... what's wrong?" Katie says, as I almost collapse, folding in half at the waist, my knees buckling.

"I forgot to add the maple syrup," I say, covering my face with my hands.

Why Should a Photo Fade?

She sits on the subway, talking to her friend, and I can see what she'll look like when she's old. It's a talent I've had since I was a child, and I can see and hear it, plain as day: the jowls, the rasp that right now sounds sexy, but in a decade or two will just sound tired, the lines around her eyes.

There was a time when we were all younger than we are now, evidence of which we may find in photographs. We used to say of memories that they were like "faded photographs," perhaps more for the alliteration than anything else, but the metaphor may soon need to be retired, as the digital images we substitute for photographs never fade, the pixels staying exactly the same, forever, and no one born after, say, 1996 or so will have any idea what we're talking about.

Never Going Back Again

"So after we went to bed around five, he got up at nine to," she pinches her index finger and thumb together and lifts it to her lips, "you know, and then came back to bed." She shrugs.

I remember my (long past) days of wake and bake, slipping back into bed in the gray hours of morning, stoned and almost suicidally lonely, the delicious cool sheets caressing me as I lapse into unconsciousness.

The simultaneous longing and revulsion curdle in me, and I shudder.

I Believe You Have Something of Mine.

"Excuse me sir," says the hobbit-like man with the mustache once he's finished arguing with his wife. "Could you get some of those down for me?"

He's pointing to the giant 15 roll pack of toilet paper stacked up to the ceiling above the meat section, and I hand him the onion I'm carrying and happily oblige.

Once he's got it and he's walking away, I have to chase him down to get my onion back.

Him, Too

Cold wind off the water burns my cheeks, but the three hot toddies smoldering in my belly keep me warm as the fireworks explode over New Jersey with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground.

"Thank you Jersey," I say. "Home of Bon Jovi."

"And Bruce Springsteen on a good day," the woman next to me chimes in.