The Address Sometimes the passbook of my soul is out of date or overdrawn, like an account gone irreparably in the red. We both love language, so you will understand what I mean by this. If you don’t, I pity you with the kind of abstract pity we call love of humankind, the way even a mean pup is pitied when it runs in front of a car that’s edging down the street slowly by the curb, streaming a song from a satellite way too loud, alarming people, but not trying to do harm, it’s just a car in the neighborhood where someone’s ex lives, trying to find something he can’t find, her new address, a reason, maybe check out who lives there now, as if that matters, so the guy behind the wheel doesn’t see the small animal, lost in his revery, and hits it, though he loves dogs, and breaks both its hind legs. The dog is lucky to be alive. Somebody loves it despite its propensity to bite. Somebody’s calling its name, waiting for it to come home. Nine Days The time-lapse decomposition of the deer on the side of the highway shows flesh dissolve in one week like water as maggots in broad daylight strip the pretty corpse to bone. Two days more and even bone is gone, carried away at night, held carefully in the jaws of predators as if each fragment is a charm. There are ways of living in the world without imagining it is a different world.