Preparation

     If we had ever suspected, if we had ever believed it could really, would really happen, we never would have made so many silly gobs of stories about how it, about how it all, ludicrously, so ludicrously, so variously, so stupidly happened. Then it happened.

     And I said to myself, No. No, I am not going to prepare. Not again, not this time. I am going to wait for tomorrow and find out, wait with all the confidence with which a complete fool dismisses yesterday. Yes, today. Today, I wait, I said to myself, but I watched the wind rock the wooden-rockered chair on the porch beside me, the wind I knew to be rising. And I did not secure the chair.