The rain came down all day, great bathtubs full for hours, and that whole bleak
day, I did not get dressed until the sky turned dark and I heard the faint whistle
of the Coastal Starlight Express to California;
it sent a thunderbolt through me.
Which was a good excuse to open a bottle of Amontillado, sit and sip,
watch mosquitoes dying up and down my bare arm. Maybe, they loved
my o-negative blood, thought it the sweetest nectar they’d ever had.
Help me, you worthless thing, I said to a hummingbird,
she scissored her dark feathers at me, flew off.
How far away California seems, how very far away.
