#49

All that immortal tendering, where one stands as if on file. Footmen with books that line stairwells. "Or a game of ball" - and that's my brother. The orange cone a conscripted pedastle for the popular theories mentioned. It's the rainy season, only no longer, and the worms are buried deep in their craven crawlways. People ring, letters are delivered. The scent of last year's picnics scattered with the leaves. Everyone has a bone to pick, and best choose carefully.

I spend my evening times laundering the paperwork. Reassembling, in cardboard boxes, the collations of my temper. You would say, and then listen, how the coming and goings of accidents congregate in parlours. And the white kitchen table, obscured and protected by the piles of answers to be had. It's sad, numbering meetings this way. When the sky is dreary, and the hearth bright but distant like a sailor's flare. "Or a football," shouts my brother from the door. And the pack, like those of hunters, gathered in the yard. He is, like the rain, my example.