"Tonight my heart is filled with Shreds..."

Hector was falling asleep. Jaquelin watched but fumbled with her bag of M&M's. It made a sound as she crunkled the paper bag. It echoed in the small theater in the silent places. Other kids between 19 & 20 began to open their candy even though signs and announcements made it clear not to bring any candy into the theater after intermission.

The man onstage wailed.

Some nights he heard the candy bags, but most nights he did not. He knew from years of performing the rope trick for thousands of chimpanzees and armed accountants, boot lickers, kitten shavers and ass wipers that unless a dead possum carcass were to fall from the ceiling and stop the whole thing, then it was useless to make notice of it. "You can't enjoy what you can't see...or hear." Old Kramer used to say.

"Folded pop ups, and stuff of the heart, farewell stuff; feathers, obscure bones of small creatures, portraits in lockets of the less Popes, poop, sailboats, sentimental threnodies from the gaslight era, odd riffs of jazz, corny keepsakes, tufts of hair, confederate dollars sewn into the ruffles of antique gowns, ferrotypes of audacious perukes, satins, lizard skins, coral buttons, ivory needles, silver thimbles and billets-doux from the Pretty Times Done Did."

He had lost them, once more. The catapulted youth of Mexico, the angels of Western America, the raccoons below decks, the girl running sound in the booth on her period, the geodesic dome outside in the dark.