In early November, and after a full and bulbous mourning moon, my wife and I take a look around.

In the apartment above us, a man of around 50 years old, is still hanging in there after two operations for some kind of intestinal cancer. My wife kindly makes daily runs on his behalf to purchase packs of Marlboro Lights. The smoke fills the big hole in his belly. Recently, something is amiss with his catheter. He goes in today to have two abscesses drained. The cancer commands his will to fight 24/7.

The old lady from Georgia a floor below us ventures out daily for her biscuits and gravy. She speaks in polite accent. Sometimes her wig, make-up and memory run amuck. She dances with death daily; a wisp of the woman she once was. Ghost-like is her reflection in the mirror.

I dreamed last night of a golden eagle’s wing, associating the fine texture of the feathers with a rite of passage. Fragile life after fragile life and filled with tenuous beauty. I wake up coughing the tickle from my lungs.

Directly across the hallway, a 65 year old divorcée from Beaumont. She’s on her feet daily cutting hair. She smokes like a Mack truck between customers and during her off hours. In her loneliness she joins a Buddhist group. Her participation endures a few weeks before she determines simple grieving and smoking without the chanting is preferable.

I spied our Siamese cat frolicking about the bedroom this morning. I supposed she had tracked down a roach or a centipede. The cold November air forces life indoors. My wife describes our small apartment as, “living in a petri dish” and in our current circumstance with our neighbors as, “caught in a death trap”.

Moments later we find a single chunk of cat poo on one of our bed pillows. Our Siamese likes to eat a fern plant we have discussed discarding for some time now. The plant is half-brown, barely alive. What green leaves, strands and stems still exist get chewed on by our Siamese.

“It’s hard to pinch off the strand of a fern,” I tell my wife.

On the Ashland X9 bus this morning, passing by an elementary school playground, I see a blond-haired boy swinging an empty plastic bottle like a baseball bat. He dreams he is Derek Jeter. He straddles the state of Nevada on a painted, asphalt map of the United States. He beckons a pack of giggling girls to throw something his way. Anything, so he can demonstrate his hitting prowess. It’s his private World Series and he is bound to be the hero.

The girls appreciate the boy’s clowning but have nothing that resembles a ball.

“He’ll see plenty thrown his way,” I think to myself as the bus rolls onward.

“In time, my boy.”

“In time.”