I spend more and more time in the underworld. It’s not that I don’t like this world, Kensington, Brooklyn, long rainy streets, domesticated maples carved with hearts and names, the little factories that make bits of things—second hands for stopwatches, latches for the cases of flutes.
I love to lie beside my wife, watching clouds mass in the mirror, waiting for a thread of cold morning rain, listening to her calm adamant breath and perhaps a scrap of Meek Mill from a passing SUV.
It’s just that the underworld is magnificent. The streets there glitter. The house I am summoned to has no number. A cat waits behind the door; his eyes are dazzling, purely reflective. The bookshelves are imposing, but all the books are blank, no titles on the spines.