this could just be guilt working. but i think i saw cumulus steam billowing from the boiler stack of the building across that of the strange man. i was again in his apartment this afternoon. in this still perfect summer day, the purring of his ac sounded out of season, so misplaced. as i lolled shirtless in his bed, he busied himself pulling out his hoodies and sweaters from another closet.
something in the way he fished out his cold weather stuff that made him look like an extra hand in a squidding crew of my childhood days. one time i saw him leaned against the closet door, the rumpled clothes on his feet like waves.
"you'll never amount to nothing," a relation told me once. "you are such a dreamer." he could be right.
i looked at this man who i swore just days ago i would never see again and i see a person making art. there was this control of the sweep of the line of his movements. he brought objects from the plane of sensuous pleasure into a spiritual sphere.
as he was about done, he gathered all his clothes and dumped them in a wide mouthed trash bag. "i'm going to the laundromat," he said. i looked up at him with a look that made him immediately say, "you don't have to go. just stay."
as he left the apartment--his apartment--the black bag of his dirty clothes spasmed with a weak and tremulous light like a deep sea squid shifting iridescence.
