8 March 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 1

The Angler's Lot

by ANDREW LUX

We met in the apartment of accident. You carried weapons: a pen, plastic bags, a grocery receipt; necessary means of transience, unnecessary hubris. My tongue was barbed. I reeled you in from the streets below. I called you sister, wave, night of many wolves. We drank coffee from plastic goblets and stood next to each other like bruised milk bottles, fearful of movement. I cast you like a pearl back into the street hoping you would return to me as a loaf of bread or a blind dove dangling on the winds of fate.