If I knew a word for the night that sweeps over me, however rarely, I'd use it.
Or not a night, perhaps, but a brief shadow, alighting on my heart like a bird and muting all;
a thin stage scrim descending over, diffusing light and conversation. To be frank,
of the eight or so times it's happened, you have caused four at least. For the rest I could
name no one cause but dream-walked into corners and empty rooms for hours past, trying to decide
where, where do I look now, now that I've epiphanized, now that I've seen the face of God and it is
desirous and the color copper ore and glowing, as things tend to do around attractive pianists.
It happened today, on the phone. You did the Dracula voice, and though it's wasn't altogether
very accurate I nearly staggered into a shampoo display. The store became a transparency, people -
the attractive lady cashier moving only in pantomime. You do this to me: everything goes
soft-focus and sepia. A tame ball python wraps itself in barrel-rings around something central to nervous
system, and I quietly devolve into a speechless creature, standing, looking upward into the rain and holding
the fencepost of a house unknown to me, as if it were the arm of someone who'd pulled me back from speeding traffic.