A power outage plunges the shopping centers on both sides of the street into darkness. Men with orange traffic wands wave cars through intersections where the signals have gone out. River home, river home to where I have power, light, heat, and a hungry dog who never asks how my drive was.

Jhiub oifihn ji llojhh kslor. Hfuhgn awtckf ksi ofpmaw kfiwh, ifdig – ofjiu jfojguu hu hgsgt ogmiw…. What are words, anyway? Lirg ughubs vcmb kai, jigu gaet hckow sertyut. Disproportionate use of the letters j, g, u, h, and k. Hawserdt bsert hst ggasu  – popoiu huyjl loacsg wertre. What are words, anyway?

The cloudy dog nose streaks on the window look different than cat nose streaks did. The dog leaves long slobbery smears, thick, thin, messy, and crude – an excitement like childhood finger paints. The cats left orderly lines of tiny boops – individual nose prints spelled out like dot and dash Morse code.

There are no teeth in the kitchen. No bellies waiting to be filled. There are no hands grasping for the milk or sudsing dishes. There are no feet padding across the hardwood floor. There are no knees bending for way back pots – no tippy-toes looking for the cinnamon on the high shelf.

The blue-white light of the computer glow punctures the dark room. The cursor flashes hungry. The music is low and the dog has flattened himself on the floor at my feet. Nothing comes to me: not the way the spindly dumb cane droops. Nor the sound of the heat pump kicking on. 

Gobble gobble. I considered writing nothing but gobble (fifty-two times) – perhaps an improvement over my other exercises in futility constrained to fifty-two words. I began to doze while trying to write, edit, and pare and now post a day late – which creates a sense of infidelity to the dailiness of my gobble.

With a thunderous clang, the dumpster slams against the top of the truck – a hulking beast yellow and green with silver hydraulic arms. Another crash. The emptied dumpster released – a shady corner parking lot of the shuttered bank. Violence done, hit and run; the truck beep beep backs up and lumbers away.

The distant fires of dawn line the horizon. Barren tree limbs and bottle brush pines stand like the shadowy images of trees as if in a painting of trees against a multicolored and layered sky. Daybreak or sunset – depends on which window I’m looking through. My eyes always drawn towards the light.

In eleven years (and one day), it’ll be eleven / twenty-two / thirty-three. I hope it doesn’t go unnoticed like big miles on old odometers. I imagine on the twenty-third waking up… “shit, I missed it.” The way I’ve looked down from the passing hills and winding roads to see 150,002 miles.

The weather app says twenty-one degrees (feels like seven). Winds swirl and sting. Eyes water. Hustle hustle, no time to sniff. Almost home, I contemplate the difference between curses and cusses. Eff this tundra bullshit. Or maybe just damn this weather to hell – where at least one might expect a warming fire.

I woke again – another day from which to rescue hope from a thousand possible calamities. Out there, someone who fell out of love long ago decides today’s the day to leave. Out there, someone else stands excited in their first apartment – empty spaces stretch beyond reach. I’m here to get it down.