Grandma came back from the dead to tell me: You can always put in more salt but you can't take it out.
Ask for what they don't have. Watch your mouth. If you need the feeling then take it. I told grandma:

I'll be right over. She said: Surprise me. Keep your visor on. Let your business unwind in the casual way.
Wash your ankles like a gentleman. Don't let them push you around. And keep your anger to your children.

I said: Grandma I've been stuck in a misunderstanding. I've been on the verge of losing you and I don't know how.
I need a bag of pebbles if I'm going to feed a rhinoceros. Grandma told me: Some weeks are hard on the shoulders.

Ask your mother. Ask your son. There might not be a hot pan of chicken on the stove but the kitchen is yours.

The night after I was born, before I learned to be cold, my mother gave me a blanket. It was blue
and white and cotton. It was the size of a good-sized flag. I called it blanket. I kept it with me.

Later when they had to leave, and had to take me with them, my mother turned to me and said
I will cut your blanket in half. One half will be your blanket. The other half will be your traveling

blanket. I called it my traveling blanket. I kept it with me and it worked. Later when I had to meet a girl
because the girl had asked me whether or not I wanted to meet a girl, the girl turned to me and said:

I will cut your traveling blanket in half. One half will be your new traveling blanket. The other half
will be our dating blanket. So she ripped out a seam and cut along the edge to make a new blanket,

blue and white and cotton, a scrap of a blanket no bigger than a folding napkin. I called it my dating
blanket. It was the size of a washcloth. I kept it with me and I think it must have worked. Later when we

knew we were on the wrong path she turned to me, as if I spoke through her, and said: I will cut your loving
blanket in half. One half will be our fighting blanket. The other half will be your aging blanket. I called it

my aging blanket. It was the size of a stamp. It was blue and white and cotton. And then I must have lost it.

Help is on the way, I told myself, while standing in a metal box falling toward the pavement at a speed approaching the speed of a falling man.

We are listening for signals from above, I was told, even as the signals I was sending were bouncing back with some sort of crackling noise.

Me and you could last forever, the man had said to the woman, right before he ripped off one sleeve of her gown and took it with him up the stairwell.

Tell me more about how that makes you feel, someone is saying to someone else right now, even as my scalp stretches out to the size of a buffalo hide.

If you ask the world then it will be yours, I lied to him slowly, just before stepping out into the corridor that ends in a turnstile.

I can't take my mind off you, I said to myself. As long as by mind you mean hands, I went on, and by you you mean me.

Late at night, after everyone is finished being themselves, I start taking things very literally.
First the housework: I build the house, clean it, sell it, then burn it down. That was a little too easy.

By the middle of the afternoon, I have become woozy on the spirit juices again. So I walk
through my house into the middle of the street outside my house, which is also someone else's street.

Early in the morning, when everything that's going to happen has already begun to happen, I give up.
It doesn't take that long but it has to be done with a degree of caution. Otherwise the roof gives in.

Around evening, the men start lining up on my porch for a handout. For every man that knocks,
I lead two around the back and give them something hard and bullet-shaped to consider. In their heads.

This tiny thing that we do, I told her slowly, it is so tiny and so slow that we don't always know it's done until after it's done.
Yes, she said, and her head moved as she looked at me as if to say: No, don't look me in the eye, not until we're done.

And I said: This thing, this tiny thing, this tiny thing that we do, this thing is so tiny, and so retardedly slow, and so hard
for us to even think about, much less do anything to change, that we don't even try to think about it at all.

No, she said. No you don't know that, she said. This thing we do, she said, it isn't one thing, it's three. Thing one is you.
Thing two is me. And the thing itself, the thing we're doing right now, or what we were doing up until we slowed down,

That was thing three. If you say so, I said. I think you might be right. Oh yes, I think you are. Now don't stop, I said. Now don't stop now.