Too Long, Too Late

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One night, in a dream, I had the following conversation with my daughter, who was seven years old (and does not exist in real life):

TRACY: So, what do people call you? I never really named you.

DAUGHTER: Phil.

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My smoke alarm is off the wall. It chirps 1,440 times a day. There was no stopping it when it started. I noted the absence of any actual smoke, dragged a chair to the wall, fiddled with buttons and wires and then – I ripped it out, wrapped it up, and stored it in a drawer under layers of winter sweaters and unemployed bath towels. That was two years ago.

I’m used to the sound. It’s baby-faint, but there. I go to sleep with the chirping. I watch tv with the chirping. And when I wake up from another fuzzy apocalypse, the chirping is what tells me I lived through it. The summer I spent in Paris, I was greeted every morning by a pigeon that flapped and pooped right outside my screenless open window. This is not better; it’s only what I’ve got.

I bet there’s a way to fix my smoke alarm. It’s probably simple and there may even be directions. I’d find out if this were still two years ago. But I waited too long and so the story has written itself most weirdly. There’s another, functional smoke alarm right outside my bedroom door. I will be safe and strange, together.