Threnody for Sophia on the Last Day of Winter Great stuff here. All the trees are so tree-y. And that scraggly cat is such a cat, crouched so baleful and orange beneath the rear axle of my snow-andsalt blistered car. My hope is Sophia loved the whole world despite the cynics, so I’ll love everything too: frost-heaved sidewalks and paint scabbing off the fire hydrants and goofy Rapunzel turrets on the Victorian houses. I’ll love even the whoops-a-daisy scrimmage of my favorite decaying memories: Gee, that one time I kissed Sophia sure zings me now! Damn you, Too Late World! I wonder if Sophia would’ve told me a Too Late World is much be!er than no world at all and twenty-six-years-ago kisses are still kisses even if recalled in a prospect of bird crap and busted-up sidewalks traversed by gimpy orange cats and the sun like God’s own utility warming us all higgledy-piggledy free of charge. Gone! Gone! I used to cry like a ghost hooting from the drains, dragging the basement with my sinner’s chains while counting up the bones. What a mope! Now I sell myself on a fairy tale
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