as_if_time_had_just_begun ovenbird We lock the doors against the hordes who would sink us if we let them in. Nevermind that some are children. We must protect our own. So I hold the handle fast in my right hand and watch a woman’s desperate face fall away. Later we drink nectar of red hibiscus while mercury eats the faces of the swerving beer maids, white aprons stained with the grease of all we would never eat if we knew the half of it. Much of our party has already succumbed to an illness without a name and the rest gather ‘round the half moon of an oak conference table, unfolding their most serious faces and placing them on the burnished surface. We bring the evidence of our devotion: one unmarred egg each, held gently in an extended palm, and drop these shining globes into a trough beneath the table top. Thirteen spells the beginning of a shared adventure. We are wayfarers, bound for the unknown reaches of the stars where we will build another world, and start our slow march towards destruction all over again, from the very beginning. 260731 what's it to you? who go blather from