on nightly developments

After bicycling yesterday for 10 miles through the season's first heavy snowfall I stopped at friend's house to get warm. Cuddling up next to a crackling fire I watch with him and his family the movie Boondock Saints entirely, and partook in a half dozen puffs of dat shweet shweet sticky sherm. Refusing his offer that I stay over on the couch or in a spare bedroom – to avoid bicycling back down into town the next morning on ice-slick roads as I do 3 days a week to teach him yoga – I instead pedaled up to my house, which because of the slush and the freezing rain took about 45 instead of the customary 25 minutes. Arriving back home dehydrated and sheened with ice I made myself a sandwich piled high with lunch-meats which I ate a mere hour before going to bed while stoking a wood fire to warm my house. With hunger sated but thirst uncorrected I brushed and flossed my teeth and then went up to bed knowing well the torment I was about to endure. Oh how I did sweat and thrash throughout the night, waking frequently with an active and queasy stomach and dreams of improbable and disturbing content. Then of a sudden there were great crashing and tearing sounds as something heavy gave way and collapsed either inside or just against the outside of the house, which I from betwixt warm covers could not exactly tell apart. I dozed as I listened but the crashing was brief and I decided my life was not in immediate danger and that therefore I could go back to sleep. Having chugged water whenever I was lucid enough to recognize the thirst burning in my throat by 3:45 am I had finally stabilized my body's fluid balance enough to sleep for more than fifteen minutes at a time; I reset my alarm for 6 am and hurried back under the covers, fell asleep quickly, turned off my alarms in a daze and awoke finally at 7:21. It was not until after apologizing via text message to my student for missing class and getting an hour into my own yoga workout that I happened to glanc out onto the rear patio. There, in a tangled heap, lay the motorized retractable awning that my grandmother had purchased but never used and my father had then bolted to the side of this house. I had forgotten to retract it at the start of Sunday's snowstorm and it had collapsed under the weight of snow and subsequent frozen rains, pulling clean from its moorings and splitting a round plastic table in half on impact. Now I know that the only real sound I heard last night was the shattering of my pride. Bows break, cradles fall, forgetfulness will kill us all.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥