ABSTRACT
It seems to me that the room was full of smoke, or smoky light. Or maybe it's the curtains I am remembering. It was summer—that I know. The windows were open, and there were thin curtains—pale but not very clean—slowly shifting in front of the windows, like smoke. Late afternoon of a very warm day. A house somewhere in a neighborhood I didn't know, a house I was driven to and would not have been able to find my way back to. Damp and dark as a cellar when we entered. Who lives here? I do not know. A poor home, shabby, but not wretched. The bed I slipped into moments ago was unmade. My clothes lie on a chair. (For some reason it was important to me to take them off by myself.) There is a big tree outside the window and it is full of birds, singing my disgrace, a song these birds will teach to their young and to other birds, around the world, so that now no matter where I am, in other rooms, in other beds, I sometimes wake to hear them, singing my disgrace.
