we sleep. what else would we do? we curl up against each other, bare skin and thin cloth. the morning heats, slowly at first. next it steams, now it blackens: as if abandoned on the stove for the doorbell's ring.

i have friends. some are missing. some are sick. some are brokenhearted. some are broken. others, just broke. some are a) b) c) d) and all of the above. i can count the despondent on two fingers, but i can count them. why is everything so hard? years ago i lived in a room where the windows weren't flush to the trim. in october i'd lie on the bed with the lights out. i'd burn old incense on a cheap rosewood burner, and the wind would blow like the wind blows in the midwest in the autumn.

listening to the wind was something like this: i could listen.

sure, i could race masking tape along the windows edge. sure, i could stuff the corners with rags. sure, i could try to intervene in the natural unfolding of things. maybe i'd even get a minute of stillness for my effort. i could pretend, in that stillness, that i wasn't poor, that there weren't so many sorrows, that i was immortal but, more importantly, so was everyone i loved. then the wind would pick up speed or shift direction and i was just as poor and sad and mortal as the rest of my numbers, the threads of our lives gliding swiftly over verdandi's fingers.

it was easier, in the end, to just surrender to the truth that there are going to be cracks and the wind is going to blow through them. not easier, exactly? but necessary to survival. "there is a crack in everything, it's how the light gets in," but these new realities are not so bravely comforted with leonard cohen lyrics. entropy is a destructive force and it does take over people's lives. it is true that a crisis ultimately surrenders an opportunity, but it doesn't always offer it to the person who is in crisis. does prayer help? does visualization work? does living your life as though the problem isn't really a problem solve anything at all? pollyanna pockets her blood money. there's a crack, there's a crack, again, again, again. a crack in my toenail, a chip in my favorite mug. cavities and car payments, i don't know what i'll do. criminal records and predatory loans, i don't know what they'll do. how can i help? i'm far away, i'm broke, i'm feckless. what can i do? let the light in, i guess. except, in my case, it's not so much the light but the wind.

i call, i listen. in my dreams the telephone and computer are wrapped tight in red electrical tape. i know my anguish is insignificant. as it was, so it is: at least i had my room, my old incense, my cheap rosewood burner, my bed piled up with books and notebooks. so it is, my lover wrapped around my shoulders, this breath sliding decisively into the next. i'm here, that's what i can offer. it's something. maybe a something just this side of nothing, but a something nonetheless. in so many cases, i'm just pressing rags into the window frame, hoping for one laugh, for one moment of stillness. a break in the humidity. a lull in the wind.