poe kerry of course it starts raining the first day she’s here when what i want and need most is a long walk with a good friend, and this isn’t the kind of rain you’d want to walk in. we’re both tired—not unhappy, just tired. she’s jetlagged. i still have sleep debt to pay since i got none on wednesday night, ten minutes tops, because my supervisor’s sneer and “96 tears” were were playing on repeat all night, until 5am when i gave up and went downstairs to read until the sun came up. luckily she can and is willing to drive. “let’s go to edgar allen poe’s house,” she said, and we went north to spring garden, parked a block away from federal donuts where the chairs and tables and floors are all red, and we each got a coffee and a donut. she got cinnamon sugar and i got strawberry lemon, and the sugar was thick in the corners of my mouth and the rain made everything smeary outside the windows, and she reassured me that what i did wasn’t wrong, that they’re the assholes, not me. poe only lived in that house for about a year, a house with a cellar still fogged with cobwebs and a third floor bedroom with a view of 7th street where his consumptive child-bride supposedly slept, and a garden on the side of the house full of wet tulips and lilies. (detour: in budapest, in a near-empty shop in what’s known as the jewish quarter, i bought a little book, small book a copy of poe’s “the gold bug,” and a watch with no hands.) we watched an eight minute video on poe and his life and death, and sat in a room with red carpets and a red couch and red chairs around a round wooden table, and i read aloud bits of poe’s essay “the philosophy of furniture,” and we laughed about his snobbery. when we left it was raining even harder and she crossed the street to stand under her bubble umbrella in front of a giant mural of poe and asked me to take a picture. we were two bubbles just bobbing along the broken sidewalk. on the way home we stopped to buy brie, cinnamon raisin brioche, ice cream, and chocolate, and then we watched reality tv, and it continued to rain. i couldn’t get over all the couture catsuits and witchy long nails and superficiality. i made dinner: penne with mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, garlic, pesto, and fontina cheese. we ended the night with bowls of mint chocolate chip ice-cream, a walk in the dark rain with louie. my mind is finally quieter, my hips and knees ache, and maybe i’ll dream about ravens and rain. 220506 what's it to you? who go blather from