The Life of the World to Come

What happens next,

after I catch myself talking out loud

to no one, alone in the evening in the

kitchen, when the echo of my voice

off the corners of the walls only

reinforces that I am alone,

the steam on the windows

mercifully transforming me into

a shapeless ghost, a darker space

within a greater blankness, and

the silence which answers my

question, the only answer that

could conceiveably be correct,

wraps itself around me like fog

and the lip of the canyon that

lies between then and now

suddenly silently senselessly

yawns open, like the mouth of a

sleeping baby dreaming of his

mother's milk, helpless in the night,

his mind filled with the only

truth, the only thing that matters?