The man in the window of the rain...

The man in the window of the rain is more a character than a man. He is more a cartoon than a character. The rain does drop like acorns tonight. I slink into bed like a fox. Hear me in my funny state. The boxed holes in the screen of my window are infinitesimal, there are millions of them, like stars in the sky. I like to squint through one and go down the row of them. This is how I rock myself to bed at night, by staring doe-eyed at the holes, un-blinking.

The world outside is a great sea-sheet of graph paper, and I am reading between the lines. Every hole magnifies a different scene and throws light on to the stage, to the shadow of an actor I hadn’t bothered to remember, in the days when the playwright and I sat for hours re-reading my story. It is far apart and better than counting sheep, or tiles in the ceiling walls.

Through box numbered 151 an ant crawls in from the rain.

In my dispossessed state the rough male kiss of blankets are strangling until I fall away.