Severely Clear
Blanketed, couched mid-afternoon, I shut my eyes. On the other side of the house, my sweatshirt zipper ticked in the dryer, went silent a few rotations, returned—tap tap inside the humming appliance. I liked it. How it lulled. Then James Wright arrived: I have wasted my life. Then the paused video in my head, the hostage kneeling in sand, knife to throat. I opened my lids, and there between the living-room curtains, behind that narrow gap of glass, a hummingbird floated in cold October light—vanished.