kaleidoscope

i am standing under the azure of day next to my mail box, my hand idly holding mail that will never be opened. i feel like i am in a trance. A summer's clear sky can do that. It can hold you captive w/ no particular meaning. It just sends you into limbo, & w/out a choice, things, shapes, begin to swirl before your vision. Today, i am a kaleidoscope.
i drop the mail from my hand, sending it scattering to the porch & sit down. W/ the dreams for now out of the way, my wife still gone, i light a cigarette & begin to twist myself. Shapes & colours dance before me in no particular way. W/ each twist, each turn, they form an image, break up & form another. i stare like a mule seemingly into nothing. & at the moment, i am a mule. Or a tree. Or... a mist from the past, dewing upon everything. Slick & wet.
The air is desert-hot but i do not notice the tears of sweat forming on my brow. Cars zip by on 9th ST but i take no notice of their monstrous bellows. Passers-by talk of everything but i hear nothing of anything, only the grating of my own twisting.
All at once, these shapes, these colours, make sense to me. They form into bodies that are familiar, or at least, once were. Right there is William Everton, a self proclaimed father, a leader, a Flesh among Spirits. Over there, is Leonard Demoine writing as if tomorrow may never be realized, & perhaps it just might not be. Standing in front of me is Thad Fellows, a Dreamer of the worst sort, a partner in crime, a friend, a fellow prisoner of unbreakable shackles. Off in the distance there stands, in a hazy font, Jewel & Rose. They are waving. Both of them holding notebooks bound by chains. Waving goodbye or hello, i cannot tell.
Thad seems to be telling me something. i cannot hear him. i can smell the odor wafting from his skin. William, too, is telling me something but it seems something more like a warning but...
"What are you doing out here?"
& like the snap of bone, these images flick out of sight & i look up.
My wife is standing before me. She has returned.
Grabbing the mail, i tell her, & we tromp up the steps to our apartment, to our home, & close the door, the lock yelling into place.