The Room That Should Not Be

It has tiny fibers under my skin now, and my respiratory passages will never be the same. I fear mesothelioma and yet I do not. Generations of men and women before me have lived with Beaver Plank, many in upstate NY, many of the same drank heavily and played cards. Brother, my real one, sees so much with his minds eye that I get an occasional phone call from his workplace, requesting directions back. Genevieve, mother of many, gives me a baby quilt in beige, perplexed that she cannot assign a gender to the embryo. They are huge, the two magnificent formations that are the source of all my joy and happiness. Damn anyone or anything that tries to make me wait in line for them. Yes, I am thinking about the class Mammalia. Our strange clade, more beastly than birds, giants of the animal kingdom. It is summer and everything blooms outside. Pentstemon. Hollyhock. Carrots. Ants forage. I have not found the time to dig a burrow under my garage. Instead, I craft the Room that Should Not Be. The cat fears a passage to another dimension. A hole to hell. Sheol.