_81. Widower

Sometime after the fact you tried growing a capsicum pepper plant in the backyard. Something with roots, you thought, but also that yields fruit, that wants to be useful. Isn’t it what we all want? But not too useful: it was a bitter pepper. When the battery in the wallclock died you first thought time was miserably slowing down, but no, then it stopped entirely and here you still were with only a lame clock for company. You didn’t bother to replace the battery. In your dreams you see water. Oceans ask you for their desired hurricanes. You lack speach until you wake. So you put off sleep, residing in the backyard and waiting for the late-summer sun to set, just you and the plant, waiting.