Afternight thoughts

The leaves are just starting to fall from the trees here and the nights are touched with a prescience of chill. Not cold, so much as a reminder of what's to come. When the light gets low now in the afternoon the sunbeams cut through my room and strike the wall above my bed. In this phase the square sunlight hits into the middle of a frame. The frame surrounds a gash in the wall. When the plaster puckers outwards and trickles white tears, what else can you do but make it art? The growing exclamation point behind my left ear punctures my dreams when it conflicts with the top of my head’s idea of appropriate dream space. It pulls away from its subject and reminds me that the naming and containing of things leaves sharp edges and bruises and has a tendency to fall apart after a good night’s restlessness. I wish I could make my other dangerous nuisances into art. If only I could frame the mice and cockroaches that climb the walls at night and eat my leftover hummus. Or even do some sort of performance art of cohabitation. I’d write a poem and they would leave my beans alone.