Hummingbird

It had been an afternoon of strong work. Not that he was heavily sweating or flaked with grime nor did he bear the look of other than someone with a bite of fire still within, for as he walked there was a pressing forward, a movement such as the air seemed to be parting, but ever so slightly for he pulled it back with his breath, a breath from a chest thick and strong, him, not knowing how much he drew from those around, their stares, their moment’s hesitation as they took that extra glance at him, for he was like an unexpected ship sailing into harbor, silent, windless harbor, nary a measurable wave lapping, but him gliding along under some other power, something not watery or aeolian, just that he moves and he is noticed, only himself noticing how lovely the world looks, as it always does for him, he enjoying the struggling shoots and buds of this decaying winter month, their slight shyness, even enjoying the muddy slush that is still here and there, he liking how it sticks, adds color to him, this he feels, how the earth so generously adorns with color, every day, different days, sometimes dark, caky mud, others the pancake of snow, still others the swirling sniffs and buzzes of Spring and the deeper lapable bouquet of Summer, ah, if he were only one to stake all this down into consciousness! but, not him, this is not his thought, not his desire; he just moves forward.

Here now it is an alley, back of a short street of houses in an out-of-the-way part of Empire. Almost all that Empire was. The humor to his friend living here was often not expressed as it was readily accepted in the heartland that there are city folk and country folk. Folk who feel justified by dirt roads. Not hesitant to gun their over-sexed four-by-fours out on the highway, but ones who knew the “where” of where they were going once they hit dirt. Not all were farmers; though most were. This a curious backdrop to his friend: a top executive for a life insurance company, spending more time under the cool sheets of Hilton that here at home; yet, only home, here.

For himself, he parked at “Hod’s Pod,” the town’s – no, more a hamlet, maybe even just a crossing! – Empire’s general store. Like to do that, buy a few things, and walk over to Harley’s place. But today he doesn’t purchase anything. Just parked, got out and started walking. Not aware that he was like a skiff allured by a beacon.

Once upon the alley, touching its puddle lip, unaware of booting several small stones, it is as if he is there already. But as if there, not moving. He does not feel himself move down the alley-way, rather, he just arrives. Gliding the last several yards, eyes peeled for an open mooring, docking rope in hand … he is docked, his rope flies out of his hand under its own will or the will of another, not his; his first step onto the dry-dock grass, meager as it is at this time of hard-endings; there – he is there, she appears: Ana.

Ana and Harley have been married a decade or so, no kids, not for not trying! as Harley bellows under the influence, hard liquor his every weekend companion, but as it goes, happily married, a homestead, not just a home: You have to marry the land, not own it! – again, a bellow; a slap; always Harley’s way; a way converted into subtler, gentler arts during his work week, artfully capturing the prizes of commerce, top rep and soon national manager, and now Vice President, but, that’s not it, it’s his sense of connectedness; he approached the land as he did women, at least as he knows he is doing with his Ana, so, his homestead in Empire is indeed his empire, and it is there that he holds court with his friends and dispenses his generosity, one now legendary as his wealth increases each year. Here, Mike had, himself, come to be at home. There was something hearth-warm about Ana and Harley’s place. Every weekend, just about religiously, he’d find himself there, for some time, maybe just dropping by, maybe catching an after-a-game brew, but some time. And there were others, a small bevy of others, guys, their gals, husbands and wives, from all parts of Harley’s life and Ana’s circles coming by. It was, without exaggeration, a court, a place filled with a bustling energy, an experience which made you want to return even before you left.

Mike had come here often before when Harley was on the road. He had helped Ana out on many projects over the years. There are nails which bear the scar of his left-handed slam. There are high windows painted by the brushstroke at the end of his over-long sinewy arms. There are bushes planted, and beds rowed, and trash piled high and lots of snow slung into vanishing mounds, yes, he has been here before; but, then, he knows, today, not really.

Mike can feel the pain. Pausing there at backyard’s edge. Pain of the growing grass, pain with fear that it might not sprout full-up and green before some other unknown seasonal disaster comes; it is the pain of those for whom winter is a dream, slumbering down under the earth, seeds, and inside the protective limbs and naked boughs of trees, the nestling shoots, everything which is in potentia shares this pain, of expectation, of the unknown; a pain which only in Minnesota do the rocks share. Mike feels this pain … as Ana appears, so does he feel; flushes.

Flushed. It is expectation, not from within him, but from without. On dry land, now. What he thought he yearned for as every sailor does, but once there? Ah!

Ana appears. What other word would he have used? If he had cared for words, was even remotely conscious of his ability to speak; but he is not. She having known all day, from the moment of moonset, that he was on his way. Far-seeing him unwind his mooring, watching his careful step into the boat, sensing the tautness of his shoulders as he pulled oars to move away from the wharf … and every wind, was it not her breath? Every quiet slap of wave against his boat, was it not her tender kiss, heart-kiss, rhythmically moving him, guiding him? Every glance from his eyes, was it not just another thread being drawn into her sigh-filled loom? … She appears, having been there, right before him, always.

“Hummingbird!” he shouts as he raises his right hand in mock salute, his customary teasing of her; a shout which is toned with excitement of discovery, a sense between them not lost to either; and so she responds, as she so often does, with a feint and dip, a courtly curtsey, and a shy smile, chin tucked towards one shoulder, at which her hair – always! ever! – falls like the cloak it is, raven hair, a glistening fall of darkness, like shadows rushing at sunset, these but to frame her, set her off, almost a cameo, there, he sees her, as she is when she so is … their hearts smile; it is not unkind to comment that these two hearts also rejoiced!

Ana has prepared. Baked a loaf of his favored Irish brown bread; sliced it; had several thick and vegetable laden sandwiches at the ready: heavy with early surprise of cucumber and the sweet lick of ripe tomatoes, yes, Ana was an inside gardener, of magical herbs and mystifying harvest, she having turned her chemistry major into alchemical arts, all fertilized by various offsprings of leading-edge technology: special winter lights which brought Florida indoors; hydroponics guided by cyber-farming techniques; anon, anon; all yielding deliciousness and delectables year-round. So, here, when others were just beginning to plant; just getting out to assess the damage of this last harsh winter; just wiping off the rusting tools, at this just time, so Ana is in full regale.

Yet, he cannot. Cannot. Somewhere inside him there is this cannot. Rushing about. Slamming against his ribs. Staking his feet to the ground. It is his own pain, unmatched by the land’s. Nevertheless, his. … “Can we eat outside?”

Mike is not aware that he has asked, and it is almost as if she is the one who says, Let’s eat outside, but it wasn’t. For her, the question was unnecessary, for, for her, there is no inside which is not outside, all being her home. Without answering, for there be need of none, she turns and steps-back inside, into her kitchen. In tandem, Mike unhesitantly strides across the yard, glances, spies and tracks down and sets right several tipped chairs, finds not a rag so uses his over-sized handkerchief, a versatile tool in his line of work, cleans two chairs: scatters whorls of puffy dust, brushes off a film of dirt, then, lifting a still stiff tarp, rouses and drags a companion table away from the garage wall, rotates it this way, then that, musing a vaporizing moment on its circularity, sensing that she is just there, a dot on the circumference, at any moment is she in the same place as he is, he but a dot on the shared circumference; an internal laugh at this misty-thought, and by the time she steps down the step or two from the back-door, so has he set full-right the table.

Hummingbird. Once said, he tries not to say it again. Labors at this control for he found himself, the first time he had ever voiced it, spending the same day plundering the word and its image to death. Everything she did made him turn to Harley and make a hummingbird allusion. “See how she just whisks around. Here. Then there. Like the hummingbird. I can almost hear her wings flutter!” How she walked. The delicacy of her movements. Her words: humming sounds. The way she seemed to appear then disappear – In a flit and a flash! Ah, he was losing it! … If Harley had been just a tad more sensitive he would have been jealousy enraged, for it was apparent – but on this day there were no others to be apparent witnesses – that Mike was blindly infatuated with Ana. Not that at any time did this turn sexual or directly erotic. No, not directly. But Ana knew. Could feel the heat. Mike’s interior heat: heartbeat: intimate. More than his words: the gesture of his hands, as if becoming nets to snare her. The pace of his breathing, as if never-ending his chase of her! The omnipresence of his eyes, for his glances defied corners and the hardness of Euclid and slid around and through and inside-out of everywhere she went. Oh, Ana knew as she knows right now, this day, this moment … knew as she had, back-then, deflected Mike’s gushing, boyish adulation, turning his comments back to him, “If I move like a hummingbird, are you the hawk?” and getting him and Harley, both, to laugh; and each time she deflected, so they laughed again, till the whole matter simply abated, subsided into Harley’s brain as an amusement, wherein he actually took it as a compliment that his good friend, a best friend, so admired his treasure: his hummingbird … in Harley’s mind, a precious flutter, humming only for him: nested in his garden. How else? but homestead.

But today was not like before. Harley hadn’t shot off one of his famous on the road emails, asking: “Pal. Go over and help the Little Lady out. You know you can’t keep her away from the shovel and hoe this time of year!” No. No email had come. Not through cyber-space. Not snail mail. No message left on his answering machine. Not today.

Ana set down the tray. It was a small table. She sits down. Across from him. But she knows the geometry. She is next to him, where she wants to be. But note! All that she knows is that she wanted him here today. Not with something specific in mind; not with her customary list of Things To Do. No, more talking to herself in counsel now and then about how Harley’s been away three solid weeks, not his longest, but the timing: Saturn in the 7^th House… and since football is over and baseball is still down south that there weren’t many people about, neither males nor females, and How nice it would be to have someone over, thinking that she was just being social, even convincing herself rather unconvincingly that she might invite Kara or Melissa, but then, finding reasons not to, and, in her own mind, settling upon Mike. “Mike, why don’t you drop by for early dinner on Friday? It’s beginning to stay lighter, so just drop by after work.”

It quickly got dark. Cooled down and darkened. But it was as if there was a shared determination: a determination on his part not to go inside and on hers to constrain the dimming light, not let it go. So, she carries out candles, of their many hundreds, thick ones, small ones: thirteen, not of the matter, and shawls: two, without apology slinging one over her shoulders, “petite” flies into his mind as the violet, finely-laced lilac cloak wraps around her, and for him, a thick Mexican one, gaily colorful, rough wool, it’s upon his lap, some rubbing of his forearms, but in truth, no feeling of the coolness, having not been aware of anything except the quite palpable force which was guarding the back-door, a stern force which Mike was glad to respect, to step back and say, Okay, nothing else.

They had eaten, she sparingly, he observing her, imaging the hummingbird darting in and out of a large bloom, so did she approach the tray on the table, a quick dart and just a speck, a teensy fragment, she’d break-off a crust: thumbnail, or, at the most, a one-sixty-fourth of a sandwich, press it down and pinch it off, another quick motion, yes, a flash, and when she’d drink, it was as if no fluid left the glass, yet, in time, hers was empty; he, in his own bachelor way, had picked up as much as he could in one hand, as much as he could chomp down and gulp with a fat-mug of Harley’s favorite pilsner, so, quickly he had eaten, then eaten again, and a third time: it had been a day of strong-armed work and his belly demanded its due.

Eaten. Then, they went inside. No, actually, Ana went inside: To grind some Vienna.- ah, she knows her potions! Mike makes some faltering excuse: Need to walk some of this off! as he rubs his belly, which would not count other than in an anatomy class as a belly as if round, for Mike was taut and hard-muscled all around, full-chested and thick but, as is said, “cut.”

Walks around the yard. Walking in uncharacteristic short steps, a pacing, then a halt, a halt within a halt, looking at nothing, not seeing what’s there or not there, just knowing that he cannot enter the house, cannot go inside, it’s not Harley, it’s not even Ana, not to his own self-awareness, no, it’s like the meal, just eaten, you sit down and eat, you don’t go through a gastronomical analysis of why you’re eating and all that, you just do, so, as when he first came, so now, he turns ever so slightly just to catch the house in his looking, and he feels it … Damn! – down somewhere within him; like missing the lighthouse, having mistaken the beacon, knowing that he should never have cast-off.

Inside. He does what he knows he has to do. Heads for the basement, sets himself down at Harley’s computer console, instantly waving off her hovering-at-the-top-of-the-stairs sweetly twittered invite to sip coffee while watching The Marauders together, a favorite of their group, he, unconvincingly, voicing some lame excuse, Need to see if I can find … it is not within him to guess whether she is doing what he is not letting himself think she is doing, not Ana, not Harley’s wife, not the spouse of a best friend, no thoughts like that, and restlessly delaying going up several hours but going up just in time to pause and call-out that he wants to step outside and smoke a joint, knowing that Ana doesn’t, and he goes out but has no joint, just a cheroot, but so he blows smoke, walks around, wanting to leave, eyeing the horizon, yet ever hearing that foghorn blast warnings: sirenic through the moonless vapor, it is a hugging fog all around, sliding into invisibility, such that no one would go out tonight, If Harley were here … and he walks back into the house: obeisance.

Ana was not there. Not in visible space. He listens for the splash or the flush. No sounds. Did she go to bed? … Just like that: Zip! hummingbird, right there, in front of him, is the light diaphanous or just that all the light in the room, the fading, receding and ebbing light of settling night, all these are drawn towards her, into her ebony tresses, there to hide, there for the moon to hide, and all the stars to arise, peek out, be playful, first as her eyes, ever the first time – ever! - lavender stars, not just twinkling but pulsing, yet ever so softly, more an ebbing flow from her towards him, and all that is sky is her hair, brushed hair, smooth and watery, a darkling water which shimmers, and Mike rubs his eyes, wanting more to convince himself that he does have eyes, for he feels himself melting, as if standing in Death Valley at desert high noon, a heat so scorching, suffocating that it bears not light, a veritable black hole … intensity: if ever Mike needed a word to help him master the moment, this was it, for his whole self was intense, not taut, not ready to burst, but full, drenched: intense as a bud about to bloom: ardent - but neither his mind’s mind nor his alert mind-with-tongue frees him a word, even makes a piddling attempt to save him … and so he drowns: Good night, Mike. … Hummingbird murmur of high pitched hum, humming him as he heads upstairs to the guest room.

It is quickly that he falls to sleep, Mike snoring loudly and shamelessly as bachelors are prone; and it is such snoring that there is no dreaming, not the type which works the body as one, supposedly, is at night’s deep rest, not the other type which plays havoc and wakes you up quite irritated, and not the yet other type which hangs upon you in the morning with a headache, more often a mind-ache, ah, soul-ache! which ruins your whole waking day as you are plagued by its meaning or meaninglessness or just annoyed like a TV ditty you can’t shake out of your head. Mike sleeps.

Harley liked Mike from the first. Somewhere back on some Spring Break in some hot town down somewhere border South: Harley had been so Tequila drunk that he forever forgot the details. He liked Mike’s easiness; how he got along with people. Tell the truth, Harley knew that he, himself, hated people, laughed at himself so often hearing others tout him as “The Galaxy’s Greatest Living Life Insurance Salesman!” and all that crap – though he liked the conventions and the applause and the trophies and the perks – here, “perks” being things he did not share with Ana, and, even, did not tell to Mike; Mike always thinking Harley to be the straightest of straight-arrows; a pathetic drunk when that happened, but always back on the job in time.

Harley could never figure out why Mike wasn’t married. He certainly had his share of girls, dames, women, and, once, a three-year-fiancé. But he always ended up a Groomsman, not a Groom. Harley almost asked Ana once, but, then, he thought, How would women know? … So, when Mike was around, Mi casa es su casa!

Sleeping. Snoring. A snort or two. Then, there was a dream. It has to be a dream, he says to himself inside the dream.

Ana is beside him. Just lying there. It happens in the simul moment he wakens as she is there, that’s how it seems. He wants to ask but his eyes sedate his tongue. She is not there! He rubs his eyes, but then is trapped by his tongue, not a word but her smell. There, a pungent, pricking stab at the tip of his tongue; almost acrid, that strange herb, Concoction! as he had called it, which she placed on his tongue, once, back several months, just the slightest dab and he was over-come, overwhelmed by this mite of a lady, she, magician, no, he teased, Witch! – as he shuddered and asked, before his tongue could form the word: More!

Now it is all about him, all throughout his body, and in that realization so is she there again: Ana, but not Ana. Yes, her river of hair, How else? – flowing next to him; in his mind’s mind he wants to check to see if the mattress is wet … her flowing where hair should be, must be, and a meadow next to the river, this her body, where her body must be – Oh, Mike wishes for a moment of pain, for a hot-poker stab or a jaw-cracking jolt, something to give him some ground … there the darting of her eyes, yes, two hummingbirds! And so he knows: Ana is here.

Mike wants to speak, attempts a word, but the sounds fall from his lips like pebbles, each dropping off into an abyss, there being no echo and upon the breath which went outward to form them so does he inhale her, she coming into his mouth, he sees it but then he does not! – of her upon a moondark boat with sail down and oars nowhere in sight, just her, standing: mast … and coming towards him, a movement of his breath, and oh he knows this desire, not as having had before but as in discovery, once discovered knowing that it has been what he has searched for, relentlessly, knuckle-bloodied scraping and heaving away of obstacles, rocks, boulders, mountains, he had never lost his direction, though he had not known where he was going, ever, so, here it is, she as this ever, he not moving, this being his direction, that of waiting, of her coming towards him, as discoverer, mystic traveler, out from the darkness, the gloom, which to him, now, is this instant all light, all awareness, she as purely seen as he has ever seen her or any woman, seeing her flesh as it becomes his flesh, for his breathing is her being breathed, into him, into his lungs, deeply inward he sucks swearing to himself that Once Now Found! that he will never exhale! … Ha!

Ana nestles herself into his side, sidling up against his bare chest, her face finding adornment in the hairs of his broad, rugged chest, monster hairs! entangling forest! and the night-cloth against his legs part as he rises towards her, this her directional, her beacon, and lets herself become attentive, her thighs press their message of desire, sing praise of virile strength, calling to memory how he climbed for her, atop the roof, into the elm tree after the cat, how he pushed all of his strength, she attests now that she knew his penile strength, how his digging for her was with his vigorous being, that his plowing of her garden rows was his raking his cock, laying scent for her, oh, her thighs, ever so small, every so dainty, faint of hair, these pale messengers are present to him, all of him becoming eyes, seeing through every part of her skin, every segment of her body, how she is one, one flame of fervent desire: feverish, and he is wandering in her tresses, the dark forest which is to him lighted by her scent, a scent unknown, but then known, as if all that is good in smell, so is she, and he bathes in this beguiling scent, lets her hair fall about him as he rolls onto his back and she half-perches upon him, washing long lashes across his face, scenting him, communicating with him, for from the tips of her dark fall and brush come the delicious feel of her rump, his hands, as if in obedience, press against her, he lifting her high above him, she the silver bowl of sacred ablution and pouring her into himself, these her kisses, his kisses, their kisses, lip to lip: adoring, and letting splash and fall all about, it is a kiss of blood, for it is the moon-boil from within her, he standing now in astral trance above her hip-boned cauldron as it seethes and pitches, watching his very heart be stirred within and his two same arms shoot with fierceness from without the boil, oh, he is heart-soul-deep within her seething cauldron, in full touch but ever yet just at her entrance, in sated feel but ever just the mere moistness of her: every inch, ever micro-movement is a forever delving into, into her psyche, into his, a mind warp and a soul wrap ….

Hours. Days. Centuries. Mark it however you want: it is molecule to molecule and quark to quark – laugh at it, however you want! Ana and Mike are deeply dreaming. Embraced. Locked through the slightest of touches. Fingertips – and all is transmitted. The eons of waiting, the mystery of Forever Living, coming as he nips her ears, pauses and licks behind her right ear, licking there and then letting his liquid hunger chase him down the scarf of her neck, this bend of pleasure so intense that he looses his tongue and it gives him chase and chases him down under her chin, inhaling, licking, pressing hands, palms against her slight of breasts, drinking in with his pores, toes curling and uncurling in maddening pursuit of her walk, to know how the earth holds her up, to find the imprint which is hers alone, to be his alone, to allow her to walk upon him and by being so trod upon to become part of her, as mold is to form, so is he … of she there is nothing but to be the desire of fog and water, mist and bewitching vapors, to so permeate him as to spring forth as is her desire, her innocently cold-calculated objective this night, a night of her Moon Urge, here wanting to adore him as only he would be adored, she not thinking or being or remembering Harley, not a husband, not a thought that is contained by time, for in that has she been bound, homesteaded, and so willingly-bound has she soliloquized but then taken to hear the Ancient Call and sensing that for every woman she knows, mother, sister, friend that there are but moments, no, rather, slices, slithers, unbreathable rhythms when there is the Opening, and no more, no more granted, nothing larger, of no lengthier duration, and so she has accepted that the well has boundaries, that the world is round, that dead people don’t talk, yes, yes, yes! …. Her flesh Opens, at once and because he Opens: how else?

It is this How else? that had set upon her. It had come often, and she had, just as often, frowned as she strove hard to deny it, chase it away – exile it! Yes, exile. Ship off over the endless horizon: for she wanted nothing of this question. Yet, who was she to deny? To block her ears from the Ancient Call? To whimper and complain; whine and nag – do whatever she could to escape this truth? … Only his flesh is Home.

Harley would not have understood. Even if she had tried to explain. Even if he had asked, but, then, that was it, wasn’t it? He didn’t even know to ask. … So, Mike. What was he but the asking? The way he came towards women, what was his walk but that question? What was working beside her but that question? Yes, she saw that he asked it of all women, and for this she at first greatly resisted, was scared to share this knowledge, never wanted to have another woman confirm – and so she didn’t. But then she knew, clearly knew as she heard him ask this question of her, only of her – and even if she hated herself for the thought that it was only her, this time – so, she readied: he was the question, naturally, she was the answer. Moon: Sun.

Inside. Mike hadn’t wanted to venture inside. For he knew it that way, by instinct, something quite manly, like digging in the earth, he knew the seeds were there, though they would fall – must - from her apron, yet, it was his, this digging, itself the question: Seed? … Not one to expose his feelings, actually, not needing to for others always seemed to expose them for him, simply by their asking: Ana asking him to patch the roof or telling him to go over to a friends to fix some plumbing, he long ago felt how it was others who so clearly painted his feelings upon the scene, this true also of men, but what did he care? It was just his way … so, it wasn’t like he had analyzed “inside,” just that he could feel what it was doing to him. In his mind’s mind, under his manly control of his instinct, he had waited until she went to bed, then he knew it was safe – what a fool!

Inside her from all of the outside of him. Ana conjures. Breaks his bones and strikes them together: the crying sound of children wanting comfort. She draws her bread-knife high and with all her might plunges into his gut, expertly cutting him like pie, lifting organs which she grinds into their ethereal desires: the growl of his stomach hungering for her, to consume her, swallow her, what is his wringing out of her flesh, her arms, fingers wrapped around her to pull and rend her apart, to break and eat her, she his holy bread, knowing her as Life as Mother of All, ah, she grinds his liver, his spleen, his kidneys, spewing into a heap of mush all his interiority, searching out his intimacies, hidden, secreted in his internal processes, finding this the infernal path to him, and it is him aflame, driven by the mad concoction of these organs, as they spit and splurt and commingle his inner essence such that she becomes the Sweetest of Sweet to him, his tongue maddeningly working down her moving across her like licking a creamy ice cream cone, memories of his youth, there the coolness of her, the coolness of her fire, as his hands stroke her thighs and work her calves and finger around her toes and raise up her legs, lace them across his shoulders, lift her and plunge into her wateriness, there, what is driving him, what magician’s potion drawn from within her? she is all drink before him, her flesh now all one slurp, one gigantic single inhale and he is inside her, fingers and tongue, and face plunging into her forest, flying among her trees, thickly forested with wilding perfumes of magic fantasies, for he is striding, running through her forest, plunging out of its thickness onto the delta plain, quickening his steps towards her water, her river, stream, ocean, it all ebbs and overcomes him as he is now fish, devolving backwards as he slides inside her, swimming through the ocean current, plankton and amoeba and molecule of wetness, he, the absolute primal unit of life: the pulse … pulsing: this the answer to How else?

That his cock had thickened and tightened so hard and so fast that he was veritable explosion. That he had bounced her upon him and lanced her in every hole so that no dimension was left unviolated. That he wandered more than once into her caves and danced till exhausted, spent, expelling himself out of his own skin as sperm and sperm and yet more sperm. That he had placed every part of himself inside her, seeking a resting place for his wilding fingers, his renegade tongue, his itching toes, his lusting heart … oh, every heart beat, he beat her with, flailed her, subdued her, conquered her and then rejoiced in surrendering to her, flowing with her, melding into her: what would it count if memory had been only of mounting her small but tantalizing mound of ass? Mounting her and braying to the stars? Filling the neighborhood with crazy man screams? Plundering her. Or, if only of her rocketing his cock in mouthful pleasure? Or, of his swallowing every ounce of her mammary milk? … Yes, these to be forgotten in place of stronger memories: of memory which is not thought nor feeling nor sensation nor even desire; that of pulsing.

And when Harley came home, she greeted him with gushing joy: “I’m pregnant!” They both were childishly happy. That weekend Empire rocked from Friday night till Monday morn. It would rock as such three times hence.

“Hummingbird!”

“Hawk!”

Never to be spoken, again.

Mike comes over and helps Ana out when Harley asks him. He baby-sits his god-child, and Harley’s others as they come. Empire barely grows as they age, and, in time, all who knew Harley and Ana as friends pass away. In the garden, now paved over, there are eternal rows being plowed. On the roof, twice replaced, there are presences of nails hammered and scarred. In the face of the children - kicking up dust on the one remaining dirt alley - all who have lived here once, live on.

Empire pulses: How else?