Swimming in Sky

I sit down in Pel's dad's old recliner, recently claimed from the storage box, the divorce box, his mother keeps for all the furniture that won't fit in her apartment. We're all divorce kids, all suburban orphans of a sort. The stories are different and the same as we've fallen socially and economically down the food chain. But in a strange and sentimental homage to familial comfort, we've held on to that suburban love of the den, most casual of rooms, most comfortable. We've moved from rented den to rented den to rented den, with the same accoutrements, the same ragged couches, music posters, mismatched assortment of lamps and bookcases and end tables, the same beat-up coffee tables strewn with bottles and magazines and dope paraphernalia and remote control. The shut in, blinds down, stereo on, TV muted smell of dope. And the days I've spent in such a theatre, the years, watching the giggly houdini of passing time.