"are you mad at me?"

I heard him say it so clearly. It was as if i was five, threw a tantrum, and there he was to settle the score. To allow me to weep in his arms and let the anguish subside. But he is not here. Those days are no more and have not been for a long while. But my sleep had been brashly stirred, and my response was just to myself.

"of course i'm not, dad. I never really have been."

The last thing you want to hear after a night turned darkened day is the sound of birds. They come even before the sun stirs above the horizon. They sense the birth of morning better than any farmer could hope to. But this sense lays flat on the humming tones of your own rhythmic breath, as you slip slowly into the sleep you've stifled for upwards of 20 hours. Chirps packaged as insult, because you know they do this by choice. Instinct is still choice. We stunt instinct when we don't hump strangers. The birds have not cared to learn this yet. But I will teach them, by showing how peaceful i can be in spite of them and their incessant chatter. I've broken the code, too. They are laughing. That explains the shrill banshee decibels. They mock the nights brevity and how it lost at hiding all the worldly unknowables. And primarily, they direct me to the impending day. I suppose that if the days were good, their laughter would be good. But do customer service reps ever smile back? And when you sing to them, don't they consider you pest? if it was good, you'd be good for good. After a night of drinking, you can count on the birds driving stakes into today's coffin.

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vultures stopped circling. Doom wasn't apart of it. Everyone sat, blank faced, piecing together their own temper. Happenstance: a word that means we had no bidding and a corralling of no ones' fault. Eat still, and for the drink, can there be no compliment? Drink still and be still by useless digits, rallied skyward to mark the apex of the sun. At 2:30 we put away our old selves. She, her marked time, clocks in at just under radical, ready to make peace with the stench of their jobs let loose by old age, night shifts or the habit that wrought them and is stripped, fair skinned to the city legislature. She, who at any time would pledge allegiance to Emporia's flag if there were one, samples air dirty to be clean, smokeless, mean and the jar runs empty for the fifth time this week.