I’m part of a quick waiting line in Circuit City A doe-eye register-girl asks me for my Visa. Words are the only instalment plan the heavens left me. I should cut my losses with the lethal truth: girl, my best friend was cremated today in Queens, that spot on his back was a trick the angels traced: in zero-air, the pale trembles of tree-fallen snow gave back what the chapel fires made of him. Loitering, waist-wrapped in winter wind, I faced a long third down without a back. He’s air now. I left the other mourners to wish my buddy back. I’m buying hardware to amplify a hollow. I can revel in the speakers’ ambisonic sound, refuse elegies, and spin Hendrix at Winterland, The Who in Leeds. I’ll windmill pain away, drop a Gibson on the hippie-bed, pour whisky on a bleeding palm, and make like wise Montaigne: stop wondering about the why, and feel the deep self-going drop of it: write no-closure on oblivion: it was a whisper, listen it was a scream: because it was him, because it was me.