One chip in extraposition. It is extrapoised. That I never saw her coming bothered me. It bothered me that I never saw her coming. Say there is a small child balancing on a curb. A small child balances on a curb. Well, she has a small yellow bottle of bubble liquid and a small pink bubble wand--the end of which is a pink circle. She loads the bubble wand and blows bubbles onto the face of this child balancing on a curb. I walked right behind them--neither of them saw me. The child had her forearm over her eyes and balanced on the curb. The other one blew bubbles in her face. This was one chip in extraposition. All the chips ground down. Water added. A paste ready to smear on foreheads. If the hair is aflame, then it's a firehead.

A benzene ring. A buildup of creosote. A peninsula with a boat in it. The color pink for a bubble wand. She was severe when it came to letter writing. When it came to letter writing, she was never severe and often ended her transmission with a Yours. But I never ended what I wrote with a Hers or a Mine. A pleopod. Something that once crushed me but then let me. What did it let me do? Or what did it let out of me? It let a lot of frustration out of me. After, I pulled ferns over my body. These were ferns with lots of grainy red dots on their undersides. As a child, I thought I'd put them in my cap gun. I had PopPops. These felt like bits of sand wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. These PopPops could be popped under water. I had a friend who would do them between his teeth. And there were the BoobyTraps--the things that you'd pull with two strings. We weren't devoted to one another so much as addicted. To say each other is to say two people. We loved each other. To say one another is to say more than two people are concerned. Concerned about what? Concerned about the difference between devotion and addiction. The difference, of course--the definition that bringeth understanding--is another abstract noun. We were addicted to one another--that is, to each other and to a number of other people. Exes. Let us not bring up the question of our exes. One is bearded and lives in a small house next to me. He has a black car--the hood of which is pocked from hail. For him, I took large bits of cardboard and covered these large bits with tin foil. I made a large thing he'd be able to put over his car, but, when he saw me trying to fit this to his car, he told me to stop. He asked me what I was doing. He had a beard. He was a question of an ex. I told him I was making armor for his car. In the next hail storm, all he'd have to do is put the armor on his car and nothing would get dinged. What about me? he asked me. He must have meant that he'd get dinged as he'd run out and put the armor on his car. So our devotion was to one another. I was devoted--no, delivered by her--to his beard and his car and to the armor I made. He was not devoted to me in the least, but he worked at a record store, and he loved another man there. They had cats there, too, and--whenever he wanted--he would pet them and allow them to knead his lap. He was strange, and lived in a small house next to me. It was always so easy to guess the days he'd be outside and on his porch. It was easy because it was only nice days. Nice days only. Whereas I would go out any day.

She was devoted more to him than to me. She emoted. She pent time trying to get us to part. What of it? She was fraudulent. She was devout. She was mad at her loyalties, and yet she kept them. Marked by mint. Eelware. I gave her eelware. My gaff was to give her eelware and to find a cat beneath my sink. I had to remove a panel to get to the cat. The cat had been painted purple--but by whom? Well, a neighbor of mine must have painted that cat purple. I started to wash it in the sink with yellow soap, and she--the one devoted not at all to me--got angry. So I called her Gertrude and begged her to leave. I gave her any number of the keys I had found on my wanderings. I told her some of these. Some of these what, she asked me. I got the purple out of the cat and had to wait for neighbors to come home. I wanted to ask them how the cat got like that. Within a braided house. The house we lived in was braided. By whom? The author of the house had to do more research, but he had found a line that he liked. He wore long underwear that he had dyed another color. He wore the long underwear his friend had died in. In which his friend had died. Innocuous. My reading behaviors were once catholic, but now they aren't. The difference between devotion and addiction is dementia. Proportion. Her mantle became so bright when we parted.