Outbreaks of calumny have not yet killed the lupine. Trying to make up for a sudden lack of air, the turf grows thin against its grid, closing its eyes, painting its gardens. Man and not-man hardly correspond at all. When a character says “I am not Romantic,” it’s because an imaginary line has crossed his heart. The willed adventure, the alpine grass, the distant lightening of a coup d’etat.

A ring rolls down its oblivious theology, a fence pursuing fencelessness. It has not conceived of a discourse of anything unmeasured as you. What is the body of all you love, a shrinking equivalent of urban footprints? Stranger yet, what loves you back, in such a hurry to take its broad-stroked genius down? Always to follow, the interruption, the jump cut, even non-sequence invites you into sequence as it’s tearing down the page. To complete the picture line by line is only to paint the string into the labyrinth, a garden maze’s unseen ruler, a savage sentence drawn neatly through the lines.

I was playing with this arc until its family broke the thread. I was witnessing their vine turn from kelly into pumpkin. What seizes your art when you turn your back? What does a house do in the rain without even thinking about it? What did the girl mean by getting even, when her action was already horizontal? A family is being rained on by a house that can’t protect it. I want to praise their love as if it were a shelter. I want to protect the fieldmouse from their cat. Their ivy is on fire.