Because you’re asking me if I want to paint something. So I’m saying that I would like to.

Oh no. Oh lord. What’s this now, in the bottom drawer. In Pants. …

No pants. Just papers.

Here we go again. But what now…

In the chaos of things left — things to go through and things to save, things to donate or throw away — in this absolute storm of things and things and cats and things…

We have an old, wooden chest of drawers.

I became more of a thinker and a capturer of reality — still poetic reality, still with beautiful things. Even taking my dog for a walk was poetry.

“You know, I would catsit for her. When she would go out of town. And she would have these specific instructions. Like, so specific. All written out and everything. ‘Fillow needs more attention than the others, he’s really sensitive. So please spend some time with him, pet him, make sure he’s OK.’ … Oh, and there was a certain time I was supposed to play music for them, put on the radio. She had it set to a certain channel, it was set to a specific program she said they liked. I think it was classical? Yeah, classical.”

And I did ask her before: Hey, hey Mom, if you’re not too busy, could you send me some? She said sure.

So was that her?