Drawing on my boot laces,

I am struck by a thought.

The thought is hard, patterned,

and I cannot relate it.

Dodging it, I look back to my boots,

following the stitching up, and around the uppers.

The laces are woven cloth,

bright brown, newer than the boots.

They wind through the eyelets,

over the dark brown hooks,

wander evermore toward the top,

and I am struck again -- by a thought.

Drawing on my boot laces,

sitting on the sofa in my living room,

I am struck by a thought.

The thought floats above the floor.

I leave it there.

I don’t want it just now.

The stove glows across the room,

reason enough to stay here on the worn floral-print sofa

that would be more at home in a Florida room

than in this two-and-a-half room shack of a house thing.

I should maybe live in a trailer

in one of those nice muddy trailer parks on the other side of town.

The laces are woven cloth,

bright brown,

and newer than the boots.

I bought them last night,

and they are not what I wanted.

I wanted nice thick leather latigo.

These are too flimsy, too short,

and they hurt my hands as I tie them.

I watch them on my boots,

winding through the eyelets,

then over the dark brown enamel hooks,

wandering evermore toward the top,

but because they are so short they do not reach the top.

They approach the top and stop short,

not enough even there to tie a decent knot.

There, and maybe I am looking out the window

where it is dark outside,

wishing I had curtains

so I wouldn't have to look into the dark while I am in the light,

wondering what faces me from this darkness.

All this and I am still struck by a thought.

And still, no, that is not the thought.

Not out there, behind the window.

Look away from the window.

And still,

yes,

I am still avoiding the thought.

I am sitting on my sofa,

drawing on my boot laces in my living room.

My sofa is a worn, floral-print thing that belongs in Florida

not here in this snow-encrusted two-and-a-half room place where I live.

But it is mine,

has been for over ten years

and it is one of the few things in life that is truly mine,

because nobody else really wants it,

not even the woman who used to be my wife,

and I do.

I did,

but I don’t any more.

We are married this way, my sofa and I.

Still married.

The stove across the room is glowing

with a beautiful bed of coals

that I need to feed if I am to sleep happily tonight.

So I am drawing on my boot laces,

while I am struck by this idea.

The laces are a woven tube of bright brown cloth,

newer than the boots

which have now been re-soled two times.

These laces are not right for these boots.

These boots need fat strong long laces.

Not these puny tiny things that are too small, too short, and too shiny.

Wearing laces like this,

a man may as well live in a trailer,

skinny and shiny in the snow in the night.

He may as well have a wife who sits in front of his trailer in the summer

wearing a bikini, drinking beer, and reading science fiction.

One who absent-mindedly manages a perpetual garage sale.

"See anything you like--make an offer,"

she says to another casual stranger.

She doesn't even look up from her book.

Doesn’t even care who the stranger is.

My mind is drawn to the window

where I notice a reflection of my room in the dark outside.

Wishing I had curtains,

I think about things I might nail over the window

so I won't have to look into the dark while I am in light,

wondering what faces me from the darkness,

from the cold,

driven by what pale stakes of hunger.

All this and I am struck again by a thought.

The damn thing just stands up and hits me like a man with a ball bat.

I am startled at first, unable to comprehend fully what has happened to me.

But I know.

Somewhere behind the crushed brow, I know what has happened.

I’m just not ready to think about it now.

My sofa is a worn, floral-print thing

that belongs in a brick-floored Florida room in the summer

with the windows open

and new-metal aluminum screens shining in their cases.

Here it is a contradiction in mind and weather.

Tremendously expensive,

I won it in a drawing at a charity auction over ten years ago.

It was beautiful,

green and yellow with massive flowers, and I won it.

Who else would want it?

We are married in some way, my sofa and I.

We don’t want anybody else.

The stove across the room,

happy, thick, ornate iron,

is glowing with a beautiful bed of coals

that I need to feed if I am to sleep happily tonight.

It will be cold anyway when I wake at four a.m. to stoke it again.

So now I am drawing on my boot laces while I am struck by this idea.

The laces are a woven web of stories

that are so old they cannot be told without the fabric falling out of time.

Still, these laces are not right for these boots.

They are too short.

The nibs are too puny.

I have to tie them a full set of hooks from the top

and there is still precious little string for the knot.

The woman who sold them to me assured me

I could take them back if I wanted to.

She wanted me to talk,

to stay and talk about anything,

even a pair of brown boot laces.

But these strings belong on a pair of worn brown loafers.

These strings belong in a trailer park,

on a pair of brown loafers,

on a garage sale table,

not in my two-and-one-half room shack in the middle of nowhere.

These strings cannot survive:

they are weak.

I am struck by a strange sadness

as I think of the trailer laid out in the trailer park.

As I consider all the trailers laid out over the country,

and all the shacks, crates, and half-homes laid out over the world.

As I feel the broken cars, bottles and rusted cans

dying in the mud outside my aluminum door.

I think about all the people shuffling from place to place,

stubble on the chin, grease in the hair, feet on the ground.

Bodies shuffling, moving, decaying, dying in the stink all day long.

These strings cannot survive,

and I start and shiver at the word "weak."

My mind is drawn to the dark square of a window

where I am reflected in my room in the black hollow outside.

There is no telling from here just how deep the dark is,

where these reflections really lie.

I am wishing I had curtains, maybe even a bedspread to nail over the window

to protect me from the darkness,

from the cold.

Then I would not be weak.

I would be strong.

But I am not ignorant.

I know that a bedspread nailed over the window

will not protect me from the knowledge in the night,

driven as it is by pale stakes of hunger and dread.

All this shaggy green bedspread will do

is hide me from the truth.

I won't be forced against it,

my head held tight against the glass where I can feel the fever cold on my forehead.

But this is when it happens.

This is then I am struck by a thought.

When it slaps me around.

It is getting late and I am sleepy,

forever sleepy.

I should get in my car,

That crappy, stinking, metal clanging box and drive to town,

but it will only be cold on the way,

cold when I get there,

and closed and empty,

and cold on the way home,

and now even cold when I get home.

I am drawn to the dark square of a window

where I am reflected in my room in the dark outside.

From here you can't see just how deep the dark is.

It is left to your imagination where these reflections really lie.

How deep they can really be.

How many lives can be layered in behind.

I am wishing I had my wife

back from the trailer park

to nail over the window to protect me from the darkness,

from the cold.

But I am not ignorant.

I know that a wife nailed over the window will not protect me

from the knowledge in the night,

driven as it is by pale stakes of hunger and dread.

All this shaggy wife will do is distract me from the truth.

I won't be forced against it,

my head held tight against the glass where I can feel the fever,

cold against my head.

And this is when it happens.

This is when it falls.

This is when the idea strikes me like a man in the night with a baseball bat.

You see the man coming,

but the light is funny.

You don't see what he is holding,

don't fully understand he is holding anything,

don't get it why he is moving funny,

don't comprehend the meaning of that strange look on his face.

And I am coming around to something here,

something fine and perfect,

not like these squirmy little laces in my hands.

Something I’m going to want to think about in a little while.