Tiny.                                          Tiny.                                      Tiny. 

Wow the letters just got smaller and smaller and smaller as I feel them.

 It's a little round cup of string and the guard has grabbed at the door. 

A TV set, she said. 

I wish I could control this surge, this flow in me. But it's art. 

Art in my heart. Sounds like a good time. 

Art in the heart. Sounds preschool. 

Art in the heart. Sounds fundraiser. 

Art in the heart.

Feels like thudding and a fucking load. 

It is not airy, nor sprightly, not daffodil-ic, nor bright. 'Tis teeming and taut, 'tis burdensome and bleak. 

Take a load off Mary, you're going to carry that weight, and put the load, along time, back on me. 

We had just pulled over. It's right there, she had said, when we were maybe 6 buildings away from it. What are you talking about? It's on the corner, I had said. And then we were pulled over at the corner. Right across was the Starbucks. Why do all of our little iconic go-to's feel like a bug zapper or the conveyor of some automated plant. All made more intolerable because she was trying to control this, to make this happen, to uncoil it all just so. 

When did she lose trust here? When did she forget who I am? When did she feel she needed to? 

One day she will.                    One day she will.                    One day she will. 

In my early 50's now closer to 70 then to 30. Now closer to that physical manifestation and all the failed organs and failing shit that spring off of my apparatus, my functionality, all of them will engage her for real. You can bet on that. There will be that moment when she will have to usurp, 

drive,           deliver,           procure,          remind,           arrange,          align,        attempt, 

augment,        assign,         affix,          abide,      and            aggrieve. 

She knows I am not into this. She is trying to turn it into a game – give Daddy orders –   

Look, the door is there;  Look, the light is red;  Look, the line is long. 

It is not lost on me how much I love her – really? Love her? 

That word 'love' couldn't possibly waft my true chord for her if it was blown to me at the impact point of a Category 5 hurricane. That word has the meaning of the floor mat of my car when it comes to how she sits so sweet and tiny and fulsome in me rocks and sneakers and backyard monkeys. 

Not of this sphere at all. 

I look and see the long hair hanging from the backpack. Her long hair, her shed, adorns all that is hers and reminds me the meaning of her in my life when I brush my teeth – there in the sink – 

                               when I drink my coffee – there on the table –

                                            when I check my email – there on the keyboard – 

                                                      when I say goodbye – there now on my shoulder – 

                                                                 her embrace blessing me, 

                                                                           no again,

                                                           no word, no word, no word, 

only this thick silence of how could this ever not be 

and when will I really understand what I am to do with all of this. 

And that pushes me to this dark dark sense of tininess and heaviness in my heart that is supposed art. 

It's not sweet wallpaper but more the paper bag cut to cover the book. It's creasy, and scribbled and torn and maybe hastily made. 

But I guess I should be happy that it exists at all. 

I look at her all green the eyes and thick the long hair. I see that she is in lock step with my not having it. 

She gets me. 

I push my finger to the dash above the radio. I press the little button with the image of the key. 

The pawns then spring up from the four doors all around us. 

Look, I say, the doors are open.