begging raze a cookbook teaches me how to care for them, with bullet point lists of big swings and probable disasters. i learn to feed them blood oranges and other tender fruit. nothing that needs much gnawing. i yell in a choked voice with the covers pulled up over my head. begging the sound that's stung me for sixteen months straight to yield. knowing it has no ears to hear what i say. i slip into cold clothes and find an old friend playing electric guitar downstairs. reverb-drenched notes thick with melody the distortion can't kill. his mother tells him to cut it out. his hands fall to his sides. all that's left is the dull hiss of a defective humbucking pickup with the tone rolled off. she follows me into the kitchen. hugs me with one arm. says she didn't want to leave without saying she loved me. i don't even know her. she asks about the animals. i don't remember their names. only that there are three of them, and this morning one held my surest finger between its teeth like a tool it had no use for. 240129 what's it to you? who go blather from