Five Cantos in Late September
The phone rang. It was raining, a cloudy November morning. I answered as I was crossing the street. I stood there, the rain pouring down. That’s how it ended. That’s how it was over. In fact, nobody was there when he died– he had died the night before. In fact, his body was in a different city by the time my family found out. He just disappeared. Nobody ever saw him again. I’d been on my way out for breakfast, so I went anyway. I had bacon, eggs and two glasses of wine. After, I bought yahrzeit candles, dug up photographs, and built an ad hoc altar on my window ledge. This is the first time I read the Gita, candles burning, on my knees, on the dark hardwood floor of my Brooklyn apartment.
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