The neighbor lady is going to Sweden to breathe the cleaner air she says and amidst the fizzle of back-alley dust swells and the hum of rooftop garden bees... I hear her talking about how they speak English there and how someone from the row of houses across the street will take in her newspapers feed her cat and put their eyes to her dark windows to check on the dead furniture.
Touching down in Copenhagen She blunders into bone-tired sleep as thick silence wearing thin the scraps of yesterdays conversations are broken by the doorbell rings that come soon after familiar heels click-clacking up the walk return her from her half-sleep dreams she's learned to never expect a miracle from whatever angel sent this advisor.
Meanwhile back home the newspapers sit stacked neatly wrapped in bundles two or three days deep amidst the snow with its spinning drifts in afternoon shadow and the neighbors drawn as if by some magnetic force stare through her curtains into her milky-gray watercolor ruins waiting for some scandal to come forth and break the silence there while she is somewhere on the ends of things atop a cloud that carries planes dangling in a mute sky...
