Neil San Francisco — 1986 A New Year

New Year’s, Neil sits in his kitchen alone with Huck. Outside, the sky explodes with fragments of color. They drop like hopes, extinguishing before they reach the ground. Neil tries to bake, but his cakes will not rise, his cookies clump together in unappetizing lumps. Even his brownies, usually fail-proof, burn, scent the house with sorrow and disappointment. Huck crows and flaps his wings disconsolately.

“I know boy,” Neil sighs. “I know.” He wishes Pamela was beside him watching the colors dissolve into obscurity, making his darkness light. He wants to understand her truth, but he is afraid. He knows that a thing is not untrue just because it is unimaginable; history, if it teaches nothing else, teaches that.