Bob and Weave

Join the Club

86 Join the Club On this full-moon night someone whispers your name eerily into the thin gray space beneath a door. Someone raises his cap on a stick outside the broken windowpanes. Is that really a crow trapped in the room at the end of the hall? The neighbor’s dog half a mile away will not stop barking. You think of your hands buried in its fur, its gray muzzle stroking your calf. You make your bed in a corner of a windowless inner room, rake your small light over the dream-stained walls, over the hardwood floors that complain under the weight of a single thought. What will the others who’ve gone before concoct under the shadowing moon?— the girl who decided not to kiss you in that last moment at her door, the boy who hit you in the back when the fight broke out. Yes, you are grateful and afraid; you will have years of nights in which to sleep, years to call to order the voices crackling like static in your head. Your batteries have died, and courage means to wait for whatever comes. Is it friend or foe creeping slowly toward you in the dark? ...