While he was alive, there was always fresh mint and parsley in the house.
There was tea at 4:00 in tiny blue and white porcelain cups as thin as stationery.
Little arrangements of shells and pine cones sat here and there. The kitchen sink was below a window that looked out into eternity—as all kitchen windows do.
The clock was wound when its tenor chime became too melancholy, and in the afternoon he sat on the floor with his dog, trying to learn a few words of its language, never quite finding the right touch.
His mind had room for a single passion only, so that when he drew, he did not play piano—the beautiful instrument would sit, a silent coffin, for months at a time. So, too, it was with people: he clung to only one at a time, breathing in their self-confidence, believing in them absolutely, as he had believed in God when he was a child. The unbearableness of being a casual friend held no charm for him. Every interaction had to be singular and intimate as a prayer.
His vices distorted him as a photograph is ruined by sunlight. Something deadlier than age sat below his jawline and behind his eyes. He rose up each morning poisoned by the night before. Sleepless and shaken, he crawled toward the golden light of late afternoon, when the lines began again to rhyme.
His hands and arms and legs were smaller by a percentage that seemed deliberate, as if he were hobbled together from the pie dough trimmed from around the edges of the pan. His voice was music.
He cursed God at the drop of a pencil yet always stopped to smell beach roses as if for the first time. He made a caricature of others—rapid and accurate—but could not hold his own in serious conversation.
Vapid but eloquent, we loved the sob just on the other side of his words.
