I’m thinking about bills and money. I’m thinking about work. I’m thinking about politics and the future and having a child – maybe, eventually, soon –  and the world I’ll leave a child and what it’ll be like when I’m gone and when Margaret is gone.

…and walking home at night how the potted trees join brick buildings, the streetlights through my blurry glasses, lighters lit from alleys and their owner’s sad cough and in the winter the steam from breathe of unseen faces. It could be me. Could be you.

I’m fortunate. Life could be a nightmare. I live in a small apartment with someone who loves me, we have a long porch where we watch people and smoke cigarettes. We have a fat cat. I’ve focused some, and those blurry moments are fewer and the days aren’t dark; the alley people are alley people and tress are trees and I’ll continue to think.