“I saw you called me yesterday
but I was talking to that roofer.
I tried calling you back
but I got your office
and, I don’t know, your office
thinks you’re a wrong number.
I’ll be home tomorrow.
Thank you.”

On the kitchen counter I find a potato with a post-it note addressed to what would have to be (she lives alone) herself: “More potatoes in the garage.” The “garage” underlined. She offers to make me rice pudding, a ploy to use up a bowl of cooked rice I see on the refrigerator’s bottom shelf.

I don’t answer, so no one does.

I put on “Strong Wind through a Desert Willow.”

“Extreme Rain” layered over “Diesel Generator.”

It is ONLY suffering that has the aspect
of infinity, to paraphrase Wordsworth via Wilde
and there is NO other way to the sensation
not the stars, not astronomy, not a long night of impossible pleasure.