I texted her,

Most days I feel totally worthless and unloved and try to think of ways to be loved.

Come up here.

Yes, Ma’am.

I don’t know where the “Yes, Ma’am” came from, inside of me. It just sounded right. We started watching an old movie Barefoot In The Park, with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford but she switched it over to Law and Order, SVU. Neil Simon or sexual psychopaths? The winner: sexual psychopaths. To be honest, it really was the better choice. It is a contest as to who had the lesser amount of talent, Redford or Fonda over at Barefoot In The Park.

Meanwhile, ” I need you to wash some red tops for work tomorrow.” I get out of bed to wash red tops. Then I go back to bed. A new psychopath episode is on.

I switch the wet laundry to the dryer, then discover I can’t sleep. Or don’t want to.

I come downstairs, and prep her fruit for tomorrow, pit the cherries, hull and slice the strawberries, slice the bananas. I fill her little cookie container with 3 Tate’s Bake Shop Butter Crunch Cookies. I put out a mini chocolate croissant. She has a little Sargento Balanced Break cheese, nut, and dried fruit snack. I also put in some homemade chili just case she has to work a full shift and needs a lunch.

Now in the silence of downstairs, I hear the Seinfeld DVD playing upstairs.

I will finish a cup of tea, Lapsang Souchong, the smoky kind. Maybe I will watch more of the Brooklyn Bridge. I will think of my city destroyed and try neither to cry nor plot vengeance

When dawn breaks, I will look for another reason to live.