Fault Line.

When is it that it shifts? Forever, you listen to the monitor, and when he cries, you think: Motherfucker. Go back to sleep. Do not wake up. Do not, do not. And then he does wake up, and you loathe him, and you seethe and boil and chew and bite and then you get him down and then you go back to whatever you think your life is, which is some manner of shell game one way or the other, and etcetera.

What the books do not mention is that for your ilk—the reluctant, the regretful, the where-the-hell-is-my-ex-life crowd—for your ilk, somehow, in spite of your best efforts, the kid may win you over—in part, OK? let's not make this some kind of Rudy of the babies—want another dash? I got 'em cheap over here at the forecast—where were we?—oh, hell, it comes to this: Now the Toad cries out in his goddamn sleep and my heart hurts because the kid is sad, for fuck's sake, and he's in there, and we're down here, and sure, he went back down right away, but he's got a cold, and he's a little off, and can't somebody just bring him the green stuffed corduroy dog, at least, so he knows he's not on the planet alone?

The Bradford pears are about to go. The woodpile is shrinking. Those early plums, or whatever they are, are blooming. These are the deep pink landscape-company trees, the ones at groceries and schools. We've got AMR's congratulatory tulips here on the kitchen table. We've got ants in through the back door, the surest sign there is that the planet tilts again, like always. I send, I think, the book to the guy tomorrow. One of the guys, anyway. Guy the First. Door number one. I am sleep-fried. I keep dreaming of these enormous multi-use eat-sleep-play developments. With Jeff Goldblum playing the dude at the guardhouse. Or my highschool girlfriend (hey, SRE, wherever you are). Or AMR's ex-boyfriend as the buddy in the buddy system on the tour bus, and the buddy system somehow involves maraschino cherries and that one girl from band (not the girlfriend, another girl) who played the something and who now has a kid, who (the kid) had a cold in the dream, and now the Toad has a cold, so there you are.

Chilly for a time. Storms on the weekend. The forecast is a little sporadic, but we are still live on the scene, OK? We are making an argument.

It smells like green out there. I'm just saying.