CONSPIRATORIAL 

“…any idea of yourself must include a body surrounding a song.”  Mark Strand.

After a small inconsequential dinner you sit, somewhat satisfied, in a room adjacent to where you’d dined with the strange couple invited once again by your host. Conversation 

is at first stilted, then after considerable awkward shifting in comfortable plaid chairs, 

becomes gradually alive, crackling like the logs 

of birch in her stone fireplace. At one point, glass of warm whiskey in her hand, the woman says 

‘any idea of this evening must address our three bodies here gathered in a dark room entranced 

by fire enveloped within a hush of friendly forgetting.’ I nod, exhale softly, sip my whiskey,

and wondering if snow is continuing to fall,

ask our host for my coat.