Pretend things. Pretty ones. Pretend petty isn't. Pet no one. Pretend parties part us. Pretend we won't go. Pretend to care. Tend to care rather than. The alternative, not to belabor it, but you know it isn't like it was. That's why pretend exists. For that, and for the future. We've about lost that. What's next, I mean. I see it sometimes in a bird dead on the sidewalk from the air. I see dead birds sometimes, they encroach. In my peripheral vision, always, the dead animals, unlikely ones. A leaf bag is a dead, large panther. A Volkswagon under snow--a collapsed elephant. Pretend we are where they go to die.

When you are not looking, pretend you are. The things you see that way are legion. You see birds flying backwards, reinserting themselves in the shell, beak last. You see grains of sand dissolving into the particulate air. You see people averting their eyes when they kiss. The best of these try to find trees. You see that there are no longer enough trees to support the weakening love, to prop it up with nature. You begin to wonder if nature is the invisible scaffolding for love. Is there love in a vacuum? Is there love in outer space? Or, in outer space must it all be incest? These are some of the questions you will have, in pretense. Assumed sight is sometimes truer to the bone.

Pretend you do not notice. Or pretend you do but don't want to talk about it. Isn't it better when we both pretend alike and for like's sake? you are thinking. When we are both same-page-in-same-story-same? But what you do not notice is I am beginning to think up new stories, lots of them, so many unpayed-attention-to stories that they charge over each other trying to get into the mall. One of my stories has been mortally wounded by another story's look-at-me-me-me boots. At the hospital, they ask that story to recall with her last breath what happened, but all she says is "I didn't understand how much we all wanted." And that it could never, despite all the knowing advertisements using our stories to hoodwink our selves, ever be the same thing.

Pretend, if you will, the affair is oven. A decade, other people made and discarded, gingerbread. The love gone from the heat. What will you do with the blank you shot from your heart, that cinnamon dot? Will you pretend it was not meant for consumption? We always mourn the aporia--but what about things we used up? Do they grieve us less because we've been fueled by them? The day I ate was a good day. The first day I could not eat, it hurt. And then, bitten by bitten, I got littler.

Now pretend I am all skin. You wear me as usual, not cognizant of the bruising. You wear me as usual, not realizing how protected you are. After awhile, I lose all sense of where we are touching. After awhile, I understand you are content to have me extend yourself. For instance, you don't ask me questions anymore.

Okay, pretend we are two people. You are, and I am. One of me has always loved one of you, but which one isn't entirely or consistently clear. One of you has always loved both of me, but not unconditionally. Tonight one of ourselves will leave forever. And, what will be the result? This answer will not only determine your future, but also yours, and mine, and mine.

Pretend this is me in the fake world. Pretend the fire is not fire. Maybe it is jelly and we want to be a mess. I will jump in the chimney and it turns out the fire is not jelly. After I am very done you will take my charred self out with tongs and massage it into loving crumbles. I will not make a very successful cookie, I never have. After I am blackdust on the hearth you can render a goose down to goose jelly and use it to paint me all over you. Enjoy that. Later you can decide if the fire is right for you, or if you want to soot up the snow by making angels. Very dark very speckly angels because I am pressed into them. I am what of you you will leave melty in their imprint. No cookie, but I am working on chocolate, in chips.