Things without the matter.

"You two guys better watch out."

Barb and her friend approached as we entered the room. The museum exhibition was held in a long hall upstairs, and a band was performing at the opposite end while everyone listened or mingled or stood quietly near a window with a glass in their hand. There were tables of wine, and others with platters of cheese and grapes and vegetables. Barb had on a series of gold jewelry and was dressed in dark red, and she balanced her wine while pinning her clutch under her arm. She stepped towards me and took my hand.

"You two," Barb said to me, "but you, you just better watch it. You're the best looking ones in the room. Look at you, my goodness." And she laughed, a way that seemed as though she was laughing at herself. "You're so tall and sharp. I'm here, and I just needed to tell you. My friend and I, we saw you come in and we wanted you to know, you just watch." Barb was standing close now and put her hand on my coat. Her friend was aside, waiting with two glasses of wine. Barb took another sip of hers and tapped one of her gold rings against the rim of her glass. She laughed again.

"It's okay," she said, retaking my hand and and gently shaking it. "I've been married for thirty-seven years, it's okay, so, you know. My husband is sitting right over there. We're out here. I want you to have a great night. Yes, it's nice to meet you too." And as she left, Barb laughed. "My goodness."

Anything that had also fallen.

Once off the phone, he took a slow stand and then took his coat from the rack. He crossed the street. There was an empty lot now where there had once been a long building, one with a purpose that stood for decades, perhaps a hundred years. The lot was marked by the crumbled rocks of ruin. And bits of garbage blown through the sagging fence, to where he had placed a chair in its middle. The chair was stiff and dark, its feet rigid in the broken stones. It was a free arena for thought, though not zoned by the city. When he would walk past though, he would never see anyone else using the lot the way he did, and was likely the only person ever to sit there now. He sat down and looked at the toes of his shoes, dusted by steps through what were once lit halls and tall rooms.

He remembered someone he knows telling him that anger is a thing, maybe the only feeling, which does not go away on its own. A real work is required, some deep dialectic, else it stays. When it stays, it is a mass of untidy burrs that snag all corners. It will catch on skin, and then on all that is touched.

And he held some old anger. When he sat there, it seethed against the ruins. The stones glazed and froze in their place. The scrape of his boots churned the dust to glass. He didn't know it, his want in this coming to repair into ruins. He imagined chariots of camels and horsemen. Sitting quiet in the midst, this ancient thing cast a hot blanket over the tumbled old bricks. Anger looks like a shout, but it feels silent, white. The chair creaked as he rose. He crossed back over the street and hung his coat.