and where yesterday I lay broiling in the vat of my bedroom
today a sneaky little breeze tickles my soles — Coo-ee! Only me!
shifty at first but soon breeze picks up speed with What —
did you think I was gone for good? That me and my three ‘e’s had
danced our final conga around your curtains and hightailed it
out of the element once and for all? Finita la commedia?
Leaving you with only the hot, hot heat to tan your hide?
My God, you’re a tragedian. I bet you spent the whole 48 hour
heatwave being Blanche Dubois around the place, fainting
and drawing cold baths. Don’t tell me. I bet you were writing poetry.
Oh God, you were. Oh you have to have your psychodrama, don’t you?
You can’t resist. Come on — give me a couplet you’ve come up with
something nice and plangent and I’ll write it across the skies.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Admit it. Come on. What do you say?
Don’t deny it. Speak up. But I didn’t speak. I didn’t attempt to interrupt.
It was so good to have breeze back and babbling on like this,
shooting his mouth off like he always used to, ruffling my feathers
as if he’d never been away, as if he always would, as if nothing
in the world was any different from the way it had been before.
