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Author: Leonydes  Matis

Waking In the Night Thinking About Having Kids

Written by Leonydes  Matis. Posted in Poetry. 

Ignorance remains
the steadiest path to mistakes/errors
“hey I didn’t know” is slightly
superior to “I was drunk”, or that
chestnut, “it was a long time ago,
things were different then”.
Don’t fall for it.
To hit your kids is as wrong
in 1970 as it is today, as
wrong as princes in the tower
or cigarette burns on a toddler’s back.

Night, the anger rises.
Rage, rage, rage against the 
Perceived slights of today,
not paid enough, not promoted,
night shift chain smoking 
by the hour, this job deserves a
walk out, but to where?

Later, a hit down, swing low
to meet your self esteem, 
those little shits need to learn
to shut up.
Survey the wounded.
Bathroom door, photo frames,
dog cowering by the door.
Patch the sheetrock, make 
apologies with pizza, toys.

Research reveals that the abused
so often become abusers in turn.
Poor fools, quick to anger and
quick to self delusion. Poor excuses.
Social Services knows your family name.
The same smile, bad teeth,
good with their hands. 
That one was a star athlete.
Dark rivers run strongest at night
as owls regard the trailer with
wide, wide eyes while the moon,
Uncle Moon, looks away.

Amos and I Unmake the World

Written by Leonydes  Matis. Posted in Nonfiction.

Marin County California, Thursday October 30, 2025

Dear Amos,

How do I hear your familiar, faraway music even still? You have percolated through the minutiae of my everyday mind so that I turn away from the immediate…but toward what, exactly?

Leaning against a live oak here in 2025, I scan the horizon from the seaward flank of Mount Tamalpais. A gust of your old loneliness comes off the ocean and tangles my hair. I squint past the edge of a continent, as if I could calculate an azimuth between you and me. But fog hides the distant pinnacles of the Farallones, where I imagine you still pacing back and forth.

At this point, is yours a celestial body? Or will I turn away from the ocean and see you in the flesh, sitting with your back against a boulder, dropped out of time just in time to meet me here? This confounding realm of questions draws me to you as inevitably as tides to the moon, and maybe that’s it: Like gravity, your field of influence is palpable, but when I try to explain how it works, I flail, lost somewhere between my physical mass and your persistent energy. I turn landward and the hundred and thirty-two years since you died keeps collapsing. Here you are, turning and turning in my mind, even still.

Let me try to explain: Years ago, a scientist hired me to walk the shoreline of San Francisco Bay…to count oysters. See me now with my clipboard and rubber boots, in the same wide-brimmed hat I’m wearing today. See my bemused expression to find myself — a lifelong beachcomber — getting paid to survey the intertidal zone. And as I wander the salt pans and cobble I’m also gleaning stories. At Eden Landing, I spy Ohlone hunters in the long-gone wetlands as hordes of waterfowl darken the sky. In the Presidio, I join an 18th-century crowd wagering bets in five different languages on an organized fight between a Spanish bull and a California grizzly. Essentially, I am doing what I always do: meandering, stitching stories out of the air, living in the meaning those stories create…but I didn’t expect to meet you there.

When oyster season was up, the scientist needed a research assistant, so I spent a few months in libraries reading old expedition journals and cataloging mentions of sea otters, eelgrass, oysters, and bioluminescence. One rainy day at the San Francisco Library’s main branch, in the back of a filing cabinet I found a worn manila folder full of old letters. I opened it. That’s how we met. You reached out through time and took my hand.

In 1849 you came here for the Gold Rush; I was holding your letters home to Mystic, Connecticut. Sitting on the floor under the library’s fluorescent lights, you led me down the dusty streets of Sacramento and the crooked pathway of a life. I read about your bad luck, worse decisions, and finally a journey out past the edge of the continent. I shared your longing, especially, as you remembered Mystic and asked to be remembered by it, while at the same time striding headlong into a new era that swept you inevitably forward.

That day in the library, I looked up in wonder but saw only a crowd of people wearing headphones and intent on screens. They seemed much further away than you did, Amos. I am someone also caught between worlds — between a palpable past bursting with stories and a lonelier, technological present — and your letters felt personal, riveting. You caught hold of me and I chose to live for a time in your story, and now you pull at me with an invisible force.

Sacramento City, Wednesday Aug 28, 1853

Dear Friend,

I received your letter and you do not know how glad I was. I should have answered sooner but I was up in the “diggins” and I could not write from there so you will have to excuse me and I will try and be more particular in the future. Your letter informed me that Hannah had not received but one letter from me. I have written 3 letters to her and have received 2 from her. You must tell Hannah to excuse me for not writing to her in particular this time, for I shall try to write to her next time — and let her read this letter with you and tell her I have not forgotten her by any means. Please write to me every chance you have and give me all the news there is in Mystic…for I don’t expect to see you very soon perhaps never.

I suppose you would like to know what is going on in California and I will give you what information I can. The Mystic boys are all well and some of them are doing very well indeed…working in the mines is uncertain business as some are lucky and do very well while other poor devils work just as hard and don’t make 2 dollars a day. I expect you have had first-rate times at home this summer and I should like to be there with you but I must content myself to stay here until next summer and then if nothing happens I expect to see some of my old friends again, especially the girls. I don’t take much comfort here I can tell you. There is but one young lady here that I know and I know her only by sight for I never spoke to her in my life and that is not the worst of it for I never expect to and you know very well that I do not enjoy myself very well unless I am in company with the girls. But if I should live to come home I mean to have a good time and I rather think that I shall not go to California again.

Your sincere friend                                                              

 Amos

Dear Amos,

Slow down! Men in dusty boots bump my shoulders and the racket rattles my bones. Amos, wait for me. You are so young. You’re 19, striding along chuckling to yourself, you’re harder to track than a run-on sentence. The dust-plumed distance swallows you before I can catch up.

San Francisco January 9, 1857

Dear Father,

Since my last letter to you the great contest for President has been decided the old year has passed away and 1857 has commenced his course. In the way of news I hardly know what to write as I have done but very little since I wrote you last. The schooner has been sold and consequently I am again out of employment but I am in hopes for a short time only. Lod Sawyer and myself have rented a small sleeping room until we can get into some kind of business again. I am at present trying to get the appointment of Light Keeper at Fort Point as the present Keeper talks of resigning in a few days and I am in hopes he can be induced to resign in my favor. John Wolf [light keeper at Point Bonita] has been to see him for me and Lod Sawyer is doing what he can for me in the Custom House. If instead of going to the mines last winter I had staid here I think it very probable I should now be holding a good situation at the Custom House…but I went to the mines and so of course lost all chance at that time since my gold, papers and prospects were stolen in the mines, including a letter of recommendation. If I could get a letter from some prominent man at home to recommend me, I should be all right. Father, I hope you will think this business of enough importance to assist me all you can.

As regards my capabilities, there are but very few jobs here I am capable of filling. I am not very ambitious and would be glad to get a situation as “Messenger.”

            Believe me

                Your affectionate son,

                                             Amos

Dear Amos,

See, here’s what happens when I read you: We stand together on Battery Street outside the San Francisco Custom House, people going up and coming down the steps behind us. We’re not too far from the library where I found you. And in that same library, I looked up the newspapers from the day you wrote this letter. We can do that in 2025.

Turns out a big earthquake rumbled through the city that morning — this morning — January 9, 1857. Did you feel it? You live at the chaotic edge of the world, as chaotic as your mind appears to be, influenced by forces you might imagine but can’t understand the way I do: That the Pacific tectonic plate slides under the North American continent. Deep below where we stand, rips in the earth’s fabric rub against each other, languorously making and unmaking the world.

Have the soirees and girls of Mystic faded? What schooner were you talking about? Why have four years passed since your first letter?  I try to ask my questions, but you’re already looking up at the Custom House. You may not be ambitious, as you say, but you need to hustle, so I’ll let you get to it. I step aside and you take the steps two at a time. My gaze lingers, and the truth is I am not so ambitious either.

I wanted to tell you: I don’t walk the shoreline anymore. I got serious, had a baby. I barely hear that old hum of stories above me; it seems to have drifted away. San Francisco Bay and its cities have shape-shifted, just like when you were here. New speculations roll through. Not gold this time, but ethereal industries of technology and desire, with their attendant money sweeping through neighborhoods, changing the landscape.

2025 hustles catastrophe faster than I can keep up. Often, I slide backwards and panic. Now I work as a writer for hire, spinning stories for whoever will pay, and my stories exist only in the ether, coming and going with monetary transactions. I’ve lost my place in this shifting world of binary code and planned obsolescence. Less and less is heart-felt, and I hesitate to even reminisce about that part of my life lived before it got this way. Can we find Mystic again?

I’d rather stay with you than go back to my job, so I call the historical society in Connecticut. Just think of it as a kind of Morse code telegraph, but instead of signals going through wired electricity, I talk into a device that converts my voice to electrical pulses, which are transmitted across radio waves. We have transmitters everywhere to relay the waves, including in space. What took you five weeks to tell your father takes me only a few milliseconds. It’s true, but it’s tenuous, and loud. We live in a constant electrical storm of words. When someone finally answers, I say your name.

Point Bonita, March 8 1857

My dear Brother,

In the first place I may as well explain where I am, what I am doing, &c. I am at present Light Keeper “protem” at Point Bonita (at the entrance to the harbor of San Francisco) in the place of John Wolf who is sick. I have been here since the 3rd February, but do not expect to stop here more than perhaps a fortnight longer as Wolf will probably be able to attend to his duties by that time.  

Now for your letter and it is with both pleasure and grief that I write as you will observe in the sequel. It perhaps might be considered as somewhat remarkable (and it certainly seems so to me) that two brothers separated such a vast distance one on the broad Atlantic the other on the placid Pacific not having seen each other for seven long weary years, should be thinking of the same subject and at the same time too but I can assure you my dear brother, although I have not mentioned it in my letters that there has been one subject on my mind for the past two months which I have thought of more than anything else and that was the very subject which composed the principal portion of your letter to me: “the great West.”

I have thought much about it and have also spoke of it to several of my acquaintances and if my circumstances were satisfactory to myself I would make the West my permanent home. But as it is not my good fortune to be so circumstanced I must endeavor to console my self with the hope that by and by my situation may be more flattering.

            I am very glad to see by your letter that your mind is turned in that direction too for it is my firm and honest belief that any sober, honest, and industrious young man…can with proper diligence and perseverance attain a competency and may be able in his old age to live comfortably and to look back with pride on the path marked out by himself in his setting out in life.

            I hope however you will think the matter over seriously and not be in too much of a hurry. (as I see by your letter you are very ardent in the cause) for you are young yet (17) and I fear rather too young to start out into the world alone with no more experience than Mystic affords. I hope you and Edmund will be content to stay at home a while longer and help Father for he is getting old and is not so strong as he once was. Do not flatter yourself with the idea of going out into the world and being your own man for depend upon it you will rue the day unless you are old enough to be well versed in the duties of life and have some fixed plan marked out for the future.

            Perhaps in a year or so I may be able to assist you…but as you are aware I got nothing for my labor last spring and summer and business was never so dull in California as at present. I hope however that my present undertaking will amount to something and I have very fair prospects thus far that it will. Mr Latham says that when the New Collector is sent out by the President he will give me a letter of recommendation and will use his influence to get me a position in the Custom House. Write on receipt of this and by every opportunity and believe me as ever

Your affectionate brother

                                                  Amos

Dear Amos,

Do you have some fixed plan marked out for your future? I wish I did, because at present I’d much rather stay with you. The historian in Mystic uses email to send me some of your family papers. (It’s like the telephone only there are calculating machines that translate her written message into electro-magnetic binary codes and communicate with other calculating machines to send the message to me.) Out of this nebula of missives and signals comes…your very own granddaughter! Bear with me, Amos. In the 1980s she wrote a family history, and you’re in it. But I’m afraid the dates don’t line up. You never got to meet her.

She says you were 18 when you left for California and in love with Hannah Morse, a Mystic girl. Your father gave you the money to go west, but you’ll have to earn your way back on your own. You started working the diggings with another man who’d been there longer, and unlike a lot of the other men, you found gold! But one morning you awoke to find your partner gone, and the gold with him. All you had left was the very first nugget you’d found, which you later had made into a ring in the shape of a snake with a tiny ruby for its eye. Ouroboros of course. Because you must reinvent yourself again and again using only the energy and audacity you can find within. The West, indeed.

San Francisco April 5 1857

Dear Brother,

            I received your letter of March 2nd and the 29th and you can have no idea of my surprise on learning that Father had gone to Washington and when I read the particulars to Lod you can have no idea how pleased he was for we never dreamed such a thing and for myself I can only say that I shall never forget the obligations I am under to my old teacher Mr. Potter who so flatteringly recommended me as a young man possessing “natural talent of a high order.” I owe a debt of gratitude that I shall never be able to repay and I wish you to see him as soon as convenient and say to him that from the bottom of my heart I thank him for his kind efforts on my behalf and I wish you to send the addresses of each of the other gentlemen who signed the document. I hope to be able before many months to write to you that we are occupying good positions. But time will tell and as “disappointment is the lot of man” we will not be too sanguine of success, but hope for the best.

                                             I am

                                                  Your affectionate brother

                                                                        Amos

PS (April 6th) I write this in great haste. Everything thus far goes swimmingly. I have just come from the Custom House. I went up to see Mr Latham and he told me that I should have the first vacancy and perhaps I shall get something before long.

San Francisco April 18 1857

Dear Father,

            Your very sorrowful letter of March 18th was received by due course of mail and I hardly know what to write or how to answer it for it was of such a nature that I am overpowered with grief and sorrow. When I received the last letter from Horace everything at home was all right but now in the short space of two weeks how changed. My poor dear sister at the early age of twenty-one left a widow with a dear child so young as to be unable to realize her loss and I have lost a dear brother.

            I do not desire nor do I feel like writing much at this time for the sorrowful tidings have so overpowered me that I am not in a condition to write or hardly think.

Give my best love to all our family and believe me as ever

                                Your sorrowful but affectionate son

                                                Amos

 PS I will write you a line about the affairs of Lodowick and myself. We are using our utmost endeavors to get all the influence possible in this country. One of Lod’s friends who has been one of the principal clerks in the Custom House for the last four years…has promised him that he will write to his cousin this mail and recommend Lod to him, so I think if all works well we may be successful in getting a place.

Amos,

There you are in a small, cold room, staring at the wall. I can feel a familiar whiplash of hope and despair swirling in the air. I don’t dare approach you; I just put a log in the stove and stir up the embers. On the table is a scribbled letter to Mystic. Will it arrive? Does Mystic even exist, or were your letters only ever destined for me? You are 144 years older than me, but I am just 16 years older than you are to me right now. We’ve collapsed time, you and me. We are two particles hurtling toward each other at the speed of loneliness and inexplicable desire.

It took me less than an hour to find out the widow is your sister Lydia, and the deceased was her husband, William Stanton Williams, of Stonington, Connecticut. He died on March 16, 1857, from inflammation of the lungs. (I also found out that your pal Lod Sawyer will one day patent a design for a new kind of curtain rod and get rich. Can you believe that?)

I live in a time when I don’t have to wait much for anything. Our technologies multiply and multiply. Built on speculation, just like your gold rush. Built on desire — for information, convenience, money. At least your gold is solid. Ours is a speculation of zeroes and ones. We devour them and build our lives around their ethereal framework. Our reward is consumption in a dizzying variety of modes. Supposedly this is a good thing, but I don’t know. It all seems to be coming to such sorrow.

San Francisco May 1 1857

My dear Brother,

I do not feel much like writing as I have got a very lame neck. Lod and I went swimming a few nights ago and I caught a severe cold and have had a stiff neck ever since but am getting better now.

                   Give my love to all the family

                        Your affectionate brother, Amos

Dear Amos,

Lod sleeps on his cot near the stove. You knead your shoulder and flex, cringing. There’s so much noise from the street: laughter, shouts, crashes cutting through the fog. From across the table, we smile at each other. I can see Mystic’s last shadow fading in your eyes, and that you know it’s a figment while also longing for more of its dream.

On the other hand, California was made for night swimming. Accompanied at the very least by friends, usually done on a whim from the warmth of a driftwood fire, out under a sky full of whirling stars, and most definitely aided by whiskey…night swimming, awash in bioluminescence, you are wide awake and at the height of your senses. I know, because I’m a night swimmer too, or at least I once was. Right now, you are hungry for the future and I can almost feel it too.

San Francisco Aug 2 1857

My dear Brother

In as few words as possible, I will try and explain matters in regard to Miss Hannah Morse. When I left home in ’49 I considered myself in every sense of the word “engaged” to her, and I know that she and her parents were of the same opinion. We corresponded with each other regularly for some years until Mr Fish made his appearance and after a while she wrote to me stating that she had dismissed him, and requested me to write to her as before. I did so and matters went on smoothly for a while but you know the old proverb, The course of true love never runs smooth and after a while Mr Fish made another “desperate effort” and offered her “his hand and heart.” Mr Morse however, mistrusting his intentions (and I shall ever esteem him highly) politely requested the young gentleman to leave his house, and never enter it again on that kind of business. The result was a row and Mr F left the premises with “a heart too full for utterance,” i.e. slightly excited, and I guess he has never visited there since that time. (I shall always believe until I have proof to the contrary that my letters to her were tampered with, at the time he was a clerk in the Post Office, and if I ever meet him, we shall probably have some words at least on the subject.)

She then wrote to me and told me everything that had transpired and we continued to write to each other until I left here in the schooner “Heloise.” (as I supposed for home) on May 1854, I went from here to Valparaiso, from there to Tahiti, where I stayed 5 or 6 months and finally got back to California again. I went back to Tahiti again and arrived here in August 1855. I received a letter from her written “May 1st 1855” stating that she had given up seeing me again and suggesting that we should close our correspondence. I answered her letter and have never written to her since, until last mail (July 20) I have understood that she does not go much into company and that her health does not appear to be so good as formerly and I have thought that perhaps she would write to me if I would write first. Consequently I wrote to her by the last mail and a few weeks will probably tell the result. The above is in brief a correct statement, and I trust no one will know it but you and me.

            Write often as you can for you don’t know how acceptable your letters are

                                      Give my love to all the family and believe me

                                                            As ever your affectionate brother

                                                                                    Amos Clift

Dear Amos,

Mr. Fish, notorious rascal of the Mystic PO? Hannah Morse, in her eighth year of correspondence-or-not? How is she still maybe available after all these years? And the Heloise. The mysterious schooner from early in your letters, coming back around on the wheel of stories.

You were in Tahiti during the gap in letters. But how does one think one is going home to Mystic on a voyage to the South Pacific? I’m scanning back through everything I know about you. You came from a carpentering family. Your father built boats and houses in Mystic, which still stand as museums and landmarks. I am searching for the Heloise’s crew and passenger lists, but until I find them, I’ll think of you as the ship’s carpenter. Lord knows you didn’t have money to buy a fare. But not a word of the voyage itself, and not a word of what you did in Tahiti for all that time.

How much of a person remains in his written words, if that’s all that’s left of him? You are lonely, perhaps editing the truth into a version fit for your imagined Mystic. No months recounted lolling on the beach, gambling for black pearls with sunburnt sailors in a thatch saloon. Dwelling among tattooed men whose ancestors ranged the ocean in voyaging canoes, ancient journeys no Mystic sailor could envision, or could he? One of them tried to teach you wayfinding, but you were too drunk to remember what he showed you. I wish I could’ve seen you there, Amos. We’d stumble together under those incomprehensible stars.

The woman at the historical society claims she has no other letters from you in her collections. I am turning in circles, trying to navigate between so much information online and these beautiful missing pieces. You are spinning your wheels too, with your Custom House vying. Across a century and a half, more than anything I want you to land your precious position, and find my own here in 2025, where my world is listing badly in an unending storm of changing technologies, each one pushing me farther from the coast of everything I once loved. So we go on searching and scrambling. For money, success, or simply to make it home alive.

San Francisco January 4 1858

My dear Brother

It is now quite a long time since I wrote you last and the only reasons I have to offer are these: viz. I had nothing to write. I have failed at getting a position at the Custom House and am going to try another speculation.

                                                Believe me

                                                                        as ever

                                                                                    Your affectionate brother

                                                                                                  Amos

San Francisco February 19th 1858

Brother Horace

            There have been times when I have not written for quite a lengthy period, but the reason was that I felt so low spirited and discouraged that it was impossible for me to write.

            You mentioned in one of your letters that it was reported that I was dissipated. I should like very much to know where the report came from.

I have drank some liquor in California and if I live I expect to drink some more but, that I am, or every have been, dissipated I utterly and unqualifiedly deny, and I challenge the party who makes the assertion to bring out the proofs. Ever since I left home it seems that there has been a settled plan to injure me for some purpose or other at first it was reported that I was going to marry a Spanish Maiden and as it is generally understood at home that Spanish girls are whores (I shall endeavor to use plain English) the news must have been very refreshing.

But

                                    “Who shames a scribbler

                                    “Break one cobweb through

                                    “He weaves the slight, self-pleasing task anew

                                    “Admire his wit or sophistry in vain

                                    “The creature’s at his dirty work again.”

Now they harp on dissipation. Well I cannot help it and care nothing about it so far as I myself am concerned. But the thoughts of my parents and friends at home is what gives me pain and many a bitter lonely hour have I passed in thinking of these things.                                                                           I remain as ever

                                      Your affectionate brother

                                                                        Amos

Dear Amos,

Such panic, such speed. From where I sit across from you in that cold little room, your pencil digs impressions through the paper and into the soft wood of your table. Look how Mystic raises its fair head. You are losing hope. But (mis)quoting Pope is sheer perfection. You could not have offered a better seduction. Your frustration draws me like a magnet and also your earnest, terrible loneliness. How is it that I know you as kindred spirit? Across all this time, yours are the words that enliven my flagging heart. Out of place, struggling to be understood and to thrive. We are the same, you and me. On a whim I lean forward, reach for your face and pull you toward me. Our particles collide with 167 years’ worth of the sun’s energy. The cloying taste of brandy on your lips goes to my head while behind me, liquor drips down the wall and lands in the shards of the bottle you just threw.

San Francisco July 141858

Dear Father

I received yours of June 19 this morning and I can assure you that it was perused with much pleasure. I have been in town about two weeks having come in for the purpose of handing in the Yearly & Quarterly returns of the [Farallon] Lighthouse where I now reside and work, and also to spend the Fourth.

I cannot answer your letter in full at this time for I am expecting to go back out to the Lighthouse today or tomorrow on one of the Pilot boats and I will write you from the Island and give you a full account of the Light and everything appertaining to it.

Give my love to all the family and particularly to little Lydia. O how I should like to see you all but that is impossible.

                                    In great haste

                                                Your affectionate son

                                                                        Amos

Amos!

You left me worried in that small room, and now everything has changed. After all these years you’ve gotten a position? I wanted a celebratory declaration. I wanted you to swing me around, laughing your hot breath onto my cheek. Oysters and ale and your tiny room…but that’s not how life works, is it? Careening into the next thing, the next century, the next self, forgetting the agonized tedium that came before. Running toward new agony. I do it too.

The Farallon Islands are twenty-seven miles offshore. That is very, very far away from people. I know you. You are happiest in the company of friends, where your reflection through someone else’s eyes is never far away. You are always in such a rush. Well, the islands will change that. Amos, wait! You’re getting blurry and I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Farallones Light House Aug 15 1858

Dear Brother Horace

We have been having beautiful weather (for the Farallones) for several days past and Mr Maynard (1st Asst) and I have been making us a little skiff to pull aboard of the fishing boats that come here to get our letters &c We are considerably bothered about getting news here as it is very difficult to land. The Island as you are perhaps aware is a high rugged and barren mass of rocks in the open ocean. There has never been any regular communication with the city except by the boat which brings out our provisions once in 3 months and the reason has been that the late keeper in the first place could hardly write an intelligible letter.

My eyes have not got well yet but they are much better and I hope they will not plague me much longer. I am inclined to believe it is caused partially if not wholly from an impure state of the blood. I am now taking some syrup for my blood (which I know is impure) and also using Thompson’s Eye Water. I expect one great reason why yours are so much inflamed is looking at the “female form divine” I presume my eyes would be worse than they are now if I could be at home this winter and go to a few parties.

But seriously, Horace, you must be careful of your eyes and not let yourself read much and none at all by candlelight for that is one of the very worst things for weak eyes.

Give my love to all the family and particularly to little Lydia and believe me as ever

                                                Your affectionate brother

                                                                        Amos

Dear Amos,

We sit on blocks in the half-finished skiff. Sap pearls from the newly hewn wood. I was right: carpentry is in your blood. You’re making this boat without even thinking about it. You talk a mile a minute about the need for a larger boat, about the lack of a safe harbor here, which you regard as not insurmountable. You fidget, tearing up wood shavings and letting the wind take the pieces, never letting your red-rimmed eyes settle for more than a few seconds. I zip up my jacket. Your wool coat’s unbuttoned. Waves roar against the slick black cliffs and gulls scream. This place is wild, Amos. Wilder than you will admit.      

You shiver and climb out of the skiff. The man I see, pausing with his lathe, looking across a terrifying stretch of sea that separates you from everyone else, is silent now and considering what, exactly, he’s conjured by accepting this position. When I went to the Farallones a few years ago, a guide on the tour boat told us this place is a refuge for great white sharks, that they come from hundreds, even thousands of miles away to circle these rock pillars far below the surface, continuing their kind’s ancient circumnavigations of the planet.

I wish I could stay with you, Amos. I wish I could bring you with me. But you’ve got to do this next part alone.

Farallones December 16 1858

Dear Brother,

I intended to have written to you by the last mail but the weather was so stormy that no boats could come out here for about ten days.

I have nothing under the sun to write you in the way of news so you must excuse a brief epistle. I expect to go to town sometime next month and shall try to send some money to Father.

Give my love to Grandmother and all the family and tell little Lydia that she is not forgotten.

                                    Your affectionate brother, Amos

December 28 1858

Horace,

It has been very bad weather for some days past and no boats have dared venture out from town. I shall finish this and send it by the very first chance and as today is very pleasant I expect some boats here tonight.

I should like to be at home this winter to enjoy some of your parties and sleighrides for I could, I think, take lots of comfort as winter is my favorite season at home but I must content myself where I am a while longer. Well Horace I hardly know what to write to fill up this sheet for if you have any idea or have ever read of a God-forsaken country this is certainly the very spot. Nothing but a barren rocky island, with the continual roar of the surf breaking on the rocks. That is the only sound to be heard. I don’t know but I should almost forget my name and genealogy and nothing but the prospect of getting home again would ever induce me to stay in such an isolated & gloomy place.

Believe me as ever

                                    Your affectionate brother

                                                            Amos

Dear Amos,

Even when you’re being swept away from everything you ever knew, you are not lost because I’ve got hold of you. I know your name and genealogy, and I will not forget them: Your brother Horace becomes a Deacon with the church. Your sister Lydia marries again, a man named Samuel J. Lee. I know your brother Edmund and your sisters Sarah and Seneca. I even know about Lemuel and Edwin, may their little bones rest in peace. And how about this to keep you going? You become a Lieutenant. Yes, you! In the 1st Connecticut Cavalry, under General Ambrose Burnside. During the war, someone shoots you through the left arm, but you refuse to let the medics amputate it, and it turns out okay. You live through the war, and you have children, lots of them: William, Ada, Katherine, Annie, and Leonard. Does this help, Amos? That I can keep your story safe, that it is what I was born to do? That living in your story also makes me feel alive?

Farallones June 28th 1859

Dear Father,

I received two mails since your last letter and I was glad to get it. Letters from home are very welcome on this lone barren rock. Mr Maynard, 1st Asst keeper leaves here tomorrow for town to go home by the next steamer (5th July) and I feel as if I was losing a brother. There is nothing of interest here to write about.

                                                Your affectionate son

                                                                          Amos

Amos,

I stand inside the light keepers’ cabin, watching your retreating back. I want to run to you but something holds me at the window. With your collar upturned against the salt spray and the ever-present wind, you hunch along with your head down, under a thick overcast. I get the sense you’re talking to yourself. Who wouldn’t, in your position? You do not stumble on the rocks or tufts of wild grass. In a sudden move you raise a rifle – I hadn’t seen that – and shoot a seabird off the nesting cliff. You keep walking. Adrenaline shoots through my body. You don’t even see the bird fall, wings outstretched and then crumpling on the ground. You shoot another one out of the air. And then another. And another. Now thousands of birds swirl and scream above you. You shoot and shoot. Shocked, I cover my mouth with my hand. The island’s 2nd and 3rd assistant light keepers come out from the kitchen and stand beside me at the window, shaking their heads. Mr. Maynard is gone, and with him the last reflection of yourself as a respectable man. Your purpose, whether real or speculative, no longer matters. You are undone.

South Farallones Nov 30 1859

Dear Brother Horace,

I tell you I am getting awful tired of this loneliness. I am in hopes that Govt will make some arrangements to have a vessel visit us regularly I am trying hard for it and have written one or two “official” letters on the subject. Things at this Island have always been in an unsettled state.

Write me as often as you can for letters are all that keep me alive here and it is now more than a month since I received any.

                        Your affectionate brother

                                                            Amos 

South Farallones February 27 1860

My dear Brother

            Yesterday was a glorious day on the Farallones, and the happiest Sunday I have passed for many a day. About noon a boat came in from town and we received some two or three overdue mails and my afternoon was passed away very pleasantly reading my letters.

            I had been fretting for some time because I got no letters and had written to Lod a number of times about it, but at last they came all in a heap and consequently my fretting is over at least for the present.

            I see that Mother thinks I had better “come home and get married” does she, well I am exactly of the same opinion, but, in regard to “starting anew” we differ for I have had such bitter experience in the past that I dare not trust the future and if I were now to start anew, I fear my head would be “silvered o’er with age” (as it nearly is already) before I got fairly under weigh. If my circumstances would permit I should try to follow her advice but when I left home I made up my mind that I should never see it again unless in different circumstances I am of the same opinion today. It is not a very pleasing reflection but it has been my thought through ten long years. I have seen much sorrow during that time much more than I ever expect to get paid for and have of course got somewhat weaned from home but yet I long to see it again for there are those there who are near and dear to me but as for Mystic itself I cannot in truth say that it has any charms for me and I do not now think I could be contented there. All those I have ever seen who have been there and came back again say that, after living in California a few years Mystic is a poor place for them, and they cannot content themselves there.

            Has that feather bed which I sent ever reached home? You have never mentioned it and I don’t now as it has ever arrived. It is not of much value and I sent it merely as a specimen of “Farallones goose-feathers” which I collected myself.

            Give my love to all the family and write to me as often as you can and believe me

                                                Yours truly, Amos

Farallones June 14 1860

Dear Brother Horace,

            I am glad very glad to learn that you are going to stick to the “old familiar spot” and I certainly think Horace you have come to a wise conclusion and I believe today that I should be far better off and happier if I had never left home but this far in life my lot has been cast in slippery places and I am getting too old now to think of starting anew therefore I must abide the issue. “There is a Divinity which shapes our ends; Rough hew them as we may.”

            At present I have about made up my mind to remain in California that is if I can make satisfactory arrangements, for as I view the matter it would be perfect folly for me to go home unless I had money sufficient to enter into some business and as I have not I must try and content myself here. I have written to Hannah asking her if she will come out here if I will send for her and upon her answer my future course in great measure depends.

            But I must close as we have some visitors here stopping a few days and I must “do the amiable” as well as possible. Write as often as you can find time and believe me as ever

                        Yours truly,

                                                Amos

P.S. I hope you will excuse this short letter, Horace but the fact is I am very busy at present. I am studying to accomplish a certain end and you must know, I am very much occupied.

Dear Amos,

We sit across from each other in the skiff bobbing near the rocks. Your coat is over my shoulders, and for once it’s me that can’t stop talking. You are “studying to accomplish a certain end.” This is your last letter, so this is my last real look at you. You’ve rolled up your sleeves and your arms rest comfortably on the oars. We’re bobbing in the narrow strait between islands, and I am desperate to stay with you. But each of us studies that certain end, the only certain end for all humans. Not to get too philosophical, Amos, but isn’t that study our lives themselves?

For a long time, physicists built a unified theory of the universe, Amos, because we all want to live inside a sturdy framework of meaning. Writers like me do too. Despite our lots being cast in slippery places, we look for patterns, we work toward ideas of success, we try to create order. But all of a sudden, after scientists built the particle collider and it turned out to work, a different picture emerged. Maybe, instead of an elegant, logical system, our universe and everything we know about galaxies, stars, dark matter, and the fabric of reality where we all supposedly reside was created out of nothing more than a few coincidences. Like how I found you. Maybe all of this — I gesture to the overcast sky, the choppy sea, the islands — is the greatest meaning we can seek, and imagination creates the only coherent moment in a profoundly chaotic universe. You are part of me. Your story feels more real to me than half of what I see in 2025. What more meaning do we need? I pause for breath. You are looking at me strangely. “I think it’s time for you to go,” you say.

You hold the boat steady against the guano-spattered island, where men have carved small steps into the rock. I scramble out. We look at each other as the boat drifts away, and then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, you row leisurely out into open water.

Eventually, you were fired from your position at the Farallon Light House. The reason, my online research reveals, was for making a deal with the egg company that came out every summer to illegally harvest seabird eggs to sell in San Francisco, where there was a chicken egg shortage. You got a cut of the profits and then lost your job. But with the money, you returned to Mystic. And when you got there, you married Hannah Morse.

After you fought for the Union army, you lived in Washington DC as a guard of that city. Hannah and the children were there for a while, but eventually she moved back to Mystic. Why, Amos? I imagine you went back and forth for a time. But then you returned to DC for good, to work in the Pension Department. Because you were always restless for new stories, like me. That curiosity and wanderlust won’t let us rest. You lived alone in a boarding house, occupied by pursuing that certain end until you caught up with it on December 24, 1887.

No one claimed your body, and when a friend finally inquired, the hospital sent him to a potter’s field, but your remains weren’t there. Turns out you were in a dissecting room at Georgetown Medical College. Members of the army under the supervision of your friend took possession of your earthly remains and finally buried you at Arlington Cemetery. That friend, it turns out, was none other than the rascal of the Mystic PO: Mr. Fish.

I leave my desk and walk outside, back into 2025, blinking in the impassive California sun. Up the street, my neighbor’s gardening. People ride past on bicycles, and a PG&E worker removes an obsolete telephone wire from between two poles. It’s time to pick my daughter up from school.

Somewhere in your faraway music, out among the Farallones, we’re still sitting face to face in that little skiff, bobbing on dark water. But what I’ve learned from you is that all we can do is change and keep changing, reinventing ourselves through time as we pursue that certain end. Stories continue on and remain. We’re together there, pulled through time like tides to the everlasting moon. All at once, it fits again, this life. Thanks to you.

Believe me as ever,

your affectionate and eternal friend,

Stacy

*Note: Amos and I Unmake the World” is a hybrid creative nonfiction/fabulist work. For clarity, this piece includes real-life letters written by Amos Clift between 1853 and 1865, and my contemporary replies. Amos’ letters now reside in the public domain.

Aubade for Boys Leaving The Knockdown Center for an Afters

Written by Leonydes  Matis. Posted in Poetry. 

You shouldn’t worry baby boy
            lips still hours away
from shame or consequence
            You say you’re a grown-up
now and you can want whatever you want
            and if you want
this swallow him within your
            slipping minutes
when the auto park
            just beyond these
fortress walls sits quietly in repose its
            steel skeletons
grinding night between their teeth
            a cemetery
filled with the dawn-bleached bones
            that sooner or later
you’ll weave through like contrails across
            blue bruise of sky
The morning will shiver in protest
            when you say goodbye
without a sound instead with looks
            of pang or envy
but for now the air is thick in your lungs
            the room vivisected
by a disco ball’s providential
            eye and all around you are
the faces of men you’ve come to memorize
            the way an apostle
would commit his sacred texts to heart
            If you want this
and who here is above wanting
            you must rest
your hand on the small of his back
            that same skin
which soon will unravel with steam
            warm clouds
lifting from his body in that instant
            when frost
first strikes heat those seconds
            where your names
will not matter below the
            impish creep of horizon’s blade
your bodies possessed even then
            by the bass
and the throbbing puncture
            of party-favored mania
scored by the key in any given
            bathroom stall
You shouldn’t worry because
            no one is dying
tonight at least no more than
            should be expected as the dark
peels away like a soiled bandage
            You are too young
still to worry about what you can’t control
            about what comes after or
next you see that is the langue of experience
            and baby boy
who are you to pick up such a tongue so soon
            Now you know what
you want even if you cannot name it
            so you pull him
into your trembling mouth’s
            ready chamber you
shake your limbs in ritual when
            at last the climax
arrives amidst that throng that great spasm
            that panicked
and orgiastic shedding of doubt
            among the sweat-drenched
congregation wearing their pained masks of pleasure
            Let it sink into the floor
flood the catacombs below your feet
            where men have spent
all night escaping what they’ve come
            to expect
If you mean it throw your stumbling weight
            into the heavy doors
the bottom of your shoes slick with
            a party’s afterbirth
Slip into day’s narrow path
            the wrath of waking sunlight
Baby boy forget how winter burrows
            beneath the skin
let your mouth hang open with
            that uncertain
steadiness just this once
            a devouring gasp
This morning is nothing more than
            early-bird traffic and
the frost’s filed teeth and the truth that
            you may never see
another quite like it for as long as you search
            this city’s streets but
baby boy show him with the last
            swell of your tongue
now so practiced in this carnivorous dance
            that this cannot last
forever Prove to him you know
            that is the point

Ladderman

Written by Leonydes  Matis. Posted in Fiction.

Welcome back. Kind blue light flushed the grey rags of morning. Strong, purposive light. Not a marketing tip, no service message. A customer reach, wedded to the a.m.

He examined his legs, slantways on the dull sheet. Essential to business, their definition assuring. He gripped the phone, terse in the stretch of his spine. He should fix that. Exercise. Warm-ups. It would take work.

A man wanted his windows clean. Fresh, to start the day. There was a chance of sun. Nothing said care, when the sun shone, like clean windows. The ladderman cooked bacon for breakfast. Folded in greased bread. He brewed coffee for now and enough for his jar. Store coffee dented the take. He wasn’t first or only at this. A hundred profiles drove a ladder. His username got recognition, his reviews – when people remembered – in the high points. But store coffee was slippage.

The vinyls on his truck promoted the app without suggesting a flesh connection. Task seekers were freelance. They owed the app. The app wasn’t liable. Their decals and materials should promote the app. But the app didn’t supervise nor guarantee. A self-regulating community. Reviews laid the pitch. His truck needed work. A rind of rust at the arches. A softness on the brake. A full overhaul cost more than pre-owned replacement. But then he’d need new vinyls. They stuck one time only. They couldn’t be lifted. A new truck meant a new plate, which went to verification. He might lose an hour’s work while it all went through. He idled each intersection, so drivers could scan the code. Sign ups from his code went to status. Medals stitched to his name.

Across four lanes they aimed their trucks at business. Plumbers, electricians, cleaners, helpers, surveyors, decorators, morticians. Hands to assemble flat-pack. Signatories for deliveries. Sitters for dogs and kids. Witnesses to occasions. Joined on the app. This work the factory joes and diner waitresses dreamed of. No more the same crew with the same complaints. No more one place the day through. No more that boss. This freewheeling future. A task here, a job there. Unpredictable routes. Unlimited distance. The choice to take or not take. Work as personal mission. Supple, not routine. Not coasting. No moments of slump. No backseat lawyering on corporate finagles. These were days of fulfilment.

Streets of okay, petty houses. This house a little worn in the boards, a little long in the lawn. The ladderman unhitched from the truck, the ladder’s stern, assuring weight at his shoulder. A good ladder. Flip to arch or clip to stretch. Aluminum grips and treads of black plastic. Still with its safety labels: stickman diagrams of right and wrong ways with a ladder. Green check marks and red kisses. Do and not do. A ladder’s not all fun, those labels said. Give ladders respect.

He showed his credentials to the door and waited. The ladderman was punctual; he liked when customers reciprocated. Some didn’t understand the time they bought was sliced from larger time. He had to assess task time, drive time, admin; he preferred not to wait. A slow start could infect the whole day.

The man at the door seemed unnaturally old. Older than decent. He stooped as though searching. His hair was smoke. One earlobe hung ragged from some life event the ladderman didn’t wish to share.

“Mr. Stevins?”

“Thank you for being prompt.” Stevins tried to make space and got in the way. “It’s a family matter.”

Fragile shelves of mementoes made fodder for a large ladder. The ladderman guided it in knee high, steering with his legs. He had to pay breakage. That was the deal. The app insisted task givers were always victims. A house so cluttered he couldn’t distinguish clothes from quilts from heaped today-only purchases, deals too hot to miss. That worked with old people. They wanted something to leave behind. Caught between walls, the ladderman waited for Stevins to navigate the hallway. “You booked a window clean, Mr. Stevins. Polish and shine.”

“Polish and shine.”

“How many windows?”

“All of ’em. They all need the treatment.”

“Maybe I start in here.” He rested the ladder’s feet.

“Not upstairs?” The old man’s screwy, pleated face held shock.

“Well, I’m in here.” The clock was ticking. The app beat time in his pocket.

“Don’t you clean a house head to heel?” Stevins’ tone suggested a lifetime habit upended.

Task givers held the cards. Tasks had to be done their way. Unable to turn in the heaped-up room, he reversed the ladder through the house, nearly back to the street. Then angled its nose for the heavy haul upstairs. Stairs narrowed by clumsy installation of a glider, its railed seat obstructive at the base of the climb. As he teased and twisted and tentatively crept by, its motor hummed to life, Stevins moving up like molasses at his ankles. Task givers had to be satisfied. Some liked to watch.

He began in the bedroom. The old man tried to make things okay. Pill boxes and brushes and junk on the shelves had been straightened. Knocked-about dust lay thickly curled at the rims. The smell of age clung against linens turned inside over, he guessed to hide stains. A pair of old suits slumped off a rail, wilted with disuse. He lined up the ladder and climbed to the top of the window. Here was the issue. These houses, built for light to counteract smallness, their windows touched the ceiling, out of reach for a regular guy. No job for a full-height ladder, but kick steps wouldn’t do it. In the bucket his cloths, his wiper and spray. No need for water. Water and windows was best avoided.

Stevins disentangled from the hoist. He clung at the door, expecting turbulence. “You do outside?”

“I’ll see what I manage from here. These flip right out.”

“It’s different from outside. Those corners are tricky.” Stevins walked to the bed – a flicker book, limbs jerked to move. He sat with earnest sadness that irked the ladderman. You didn’t show anger with task givers. The app was insistent.

“Fine little place you have.” It might be, with less junk.

“Does for me. Does well.” Stevins rummaged his phone, holding it close to his eyes though everything scaled. “It’s a family matter. Why I needed you early.”

The street was regular. Nothing to see. Old people. Young sharers. Little families: couples with their treasured addition. People with tenured jobs, corporate credentials. They could take a day sick and get paid. The ladderman didn’t care for family matters. “Nothing cheers a place like bright windows.”

“I want them to see that.” Slow fingers chumped the phone screen. “They’re here in two hours.”

In people’s homes, attending their tasks brought degrees of involvement. The ladderman liked practical chores. Paint a ceiling. Flush a roof. Any blend of altitude and attention. He didn’t need reasons. “This won’t be two hours.”

“I should tidy.” Stevins poked a bale of towels. They rose and settled. “Meant to, last night. I get tired.”

Tired people called the ladderman. Weary with everyday life, they wanted to buy what their bodies declined to manage. They said they were tired while they watched TV, eating candy. When infomercials for productivity aired, they remained, tossing sugar between slack lips. Their skin too coarse to feel the approaching hand. “You did your share.” That was the trick, with old people. Assure them no one expected more. “You can enjoy it.”

Stevins coughed untidily, spit across his chin. “They want this place. They think I don’t know their talk of helping me out means just that.”

The app provided resource against this risk. Tutorials and explainers, to mitigate and avoid. For tasks in domestic space, oversharing was heightened. A spill of personal information he wasn’t bonded to process. Step one was distract. “All clean here. I’ll do the bathroom, then downstairs. You don’t have another room up here?”

“For my wife’s things. She loved the sunlight.”

A second bedroom, fallow and undisturbed. A second bedroom those fertile couples might yearn for. No horror show. No shrine of splintered lace. Everything boxed and labelled. Stacked and ordered – clothes and accessories, make up and souvenirs. Objects that carried meaning to Stevins’ imaginings. The room’s residual furniture cowed with bygones. Slow and delicate to weave the ladder through. “This needs attention.” The window matted and filthy.

“That’s why I called you,” Stevins wheezed. “I want them to know I can manage.”

It would take more than clean windows. Stagnation filled the house. But prestige was no more than accumulated reviews, so he cut to it, scraping the glass to a mild vista of backyards. Bleaching the frames. Bringing the hinge its shine. And so with each window in that little house. When he took the ladder to the dusty backyard, to lay up against that dormant bedroom, Stevins was at the boxes, reading labels, smoothing packing tape, a gesture of cautious curation.

Credits transferred. The old man didn’t tip.

“Now the sun can get in.”

“I’ll show them.” Stevins shuffled aimlessly on the rug. “I can keep my windows clean. They don’t need to take me away.”

“No they don’t.”

“They’re grabby. But I’ll fix them.”

“You do.”

“They can’t take my home. Can they, huh? They can’t make me.”

Those neat stacked boxes. The guy who got that removal would need a spine.

Not late, not yet. He should hustle. Each day got late. An hour, could be, by time he was done. Status was a reward of punctuality. But that wasn’t always possible, not knowing the tasks. Even with an intelligent vehicle, the quickest route wasn’t always the slickest. Parking wasn’t assured. Especially at blocks like this: a foursquare concrete divot over retail. Cameras watched him cruise. More than twice around was suspect.

“Not there.” The super was a little guy with the tremendous delts of unquestioned authority. His stocky outrage from the lobby suggested pleasure no kindness could equal. “You can’t street park. You got to pay in the tower.”

The motor purred compliantly. “One of your residents booked a task.”

“They should have comped you a permit. No permit, pay in the tower.”

The elevators in these stack lots were often too short for the ladder. An elevator was non-earning space. The shafts were minimized. He found a spot on second and sledged the ladder down the fire stairs, feeling it run on the concrete treads, embroiled in its momentum. He clung tight. Better a sprained wrist than a busted ladder.

When the ladderman got there, the super had strength for fresh fun. “You don’t take that in the elevator.”

The ladderman ate a hard breath. “I not told you where I’m going.”

“I’m in charge.” The super gave a slow nod. “You don’t take that in the elevator unless you got sacks for the mirrors. You know the cost to fill a scratch? No sacks, you take the stairs.”

“I’m here for Ms. Kinsey.”

“Take the stairs.”

The hallways were plain and neat. It took a ladder to paint the ceiling, maintain the lights, check the integrity of cable trunking pinned above doors. Humans couldn’t live without climbing higher than they could reach. Some of these buildings were fancy. Some, basic but homey. All needed a ladder.

He was sorry Ms. Kinsey had a problem walking. Her ankle was bust. It slowed her. She might have said when she booked. It took her three minutes to reach the door. “I would offer coffee. I haven’t made a food order today.” Ms. Kinsey was around his age. Deceptively tall. Robust-looking. But her walk, down on one side, showed the extent of her collapse. She mountaineered around the apartment, lunging at any support. He rarely considered prospects, delivering tasks to women. The app beat time and, anyway, too much could be misunderstood. The app provided resource against this risk. Customer service was customer-friendly. Friendly had bounds.

“You booked home rearrangement.”

“I didn’t know how else to describe it.” She stood on one foot to relieve the weight, an oddly coy stance. “I need my suitcases down.”

More conscious of damage here than in the old man’s cluttered pit, he contrived a gentle, sailing gesture to persuade the ladder between shiny paint. He never thought, at any rich level, about being in someone’s bedroom. What a bedroom invitation might otherwise weigh. He worked till he stopped. He slept without effort. He welcomed each busy day. His truck purring around the city was credit earned. He didn’t question the task givers. The clock was ticking.

This bedroom was a light space. High enough for primary sun. Sympathetic reflections cut shapes in white paint. In white linen, corners tucked, edges smooth. The table glass shot light across grey carpet. Its cleanness astounding.

Ms. Kinsey, awkward at the dressing table, its sparse and sensible product all hygiene. She reached to rub her ankle, a creased look of annoyance. “I appreciate it’s not much of a job. I can’t trust myself on steps.” One wall of the room, floor to ceiling, side to side, was the closet. Glass-fronted below attic cupboards. The ladderman’s reflection held the ladder keenly, its feet truffled the carpet, its body tight to his side. Ms. Kinsey’s reflection was solemn as she picked around under her slippers, testing her feet, massaging persistent pain.

“In the top cupboards?”

“You move to a place. You unpack. What do you do?” She straightened, for the mirror. “You’re optimistic. You think you won’t need your cases a long time.”

The carpet by the closet spiked with heel points, between uncrushed fiber sprung like rye. “The ladder might draw some ruts. They should ease out.”

“It’s a rental. The last tenant had a dresser. See the archeology.”

Four cupped dents guarded an untrodden oblong.

“Suitcases up top?” He set the ladder’s feet, regretting how it humbled soft material.

“I’ll give a hand. I’m not wholly done.”

He waited halfway up while she got to her feet and a minute went, in sideways gait, crossing the room. No doubt she was in pain. No doubt it galled her. But she should have booked a longer slot. It was just stealing time.

The cupboard doors gave readily, against weight piled inside them. Spare pillows. Old umbrellas. Small linens – napkins and such. He passed down these objects. She stacked them around her.

“It’s a pity that super didn’t help.” Because he could have. The super had ladders no charge.

“I don’t want to involve him.” She spoke quiet. “He knows everyone.”

The ladderman stepped higher. Her luggage, crammed to the back of the cupboard, a respectable matching three. “You want them all?”

“I need them all.” She took to one foot, wobbling primly.

Customer service was customer-friendly. “You have vacation?”

“If you just fetch them down I’m obliged.”

The cases resisted a while. Lapped over each other, wedged to the corners, he had to gain height, reach deep. They came loose with a suck of pleather. “They need just a shine to revive them. I have spray.”

She stroked the cases like something overdue at the veterinarian. “Thought I’d dig roots. Much as one can. My contract here has two years.”

Conversation, that salaried privilege. The app had his next task. Three on the bounce earned a swill of coffee. “It’s good luggage. May as well use it. You want these other things back up top?” She didn’t seem ready to answer, so he moved the items cautiously, lofting them two-handed, where performance was all. He closed the cupboard doors, wiped his fingermarks, unwilling, as sometimes he was, to descend. To meet life at ground level.

Ms. Kinsey opened the cases. She flattened their sides, coaxing them to optimum capacity.

“Thank you for prompt payment.”

“It’s physical business, this, you do. I suppose you have a truck?”

He folded clever aluminum limbs. “These marks in the carpet. Really, they’ll fade.”

“You never take the subway?”

Some guys did. Some lofted all kinds of equipment. “Not with the ladder.”

“Not other times?”

“There’s no need. Really.” Did she want him to engrave it? Seekers were specialists. Part-substitutable. Reviews made status, not small talk. “Have a good vacation.”

“I always took the subway. To the job. No thought about it. Down underground each morning. Back to the surface at night. A job is a good thing. Gives the day purpose.”

They never grasped the time they bought was cut from bigger time. Non-earning time, moving the ladder place to place. Attending the ladder. Keeping it lucrative. He had the next task. He should be gone. “Be careful. With the ankle.” It wasn’t transgression. She told him.

“In your truck I guess it’s you. And devices. What you see is always far side of some material. But the subway is up close. Bodies. Looking to exit.”

“I hear it’s busy.” The ladder a friendly, authoritative weight. Nosing its way to the door.

“You know the moving stairs.” Her hands made a rising, step on step. Her wrists all rigidity. “Everyone jostles a little. I don’t mean I’m discourteous.” She quailed at this notion. “You don’t always see. There’s people, their luggage. And equipment. People with equipment.”

He set down the ladder to open the door. Its sudden absence like ice. “Yeah, I hear.”

“I got close of someone. We collided, I guess. The stairs, all the movement. I couldn’t stop.” Her voice the bright edge of grass. “I was moving. Those moving stairs don’t stop. I didn’t mean to offend her. My ankle collapsed. I nearly fell. They took me to hospital. She cursed me.”

He had the door open. He held the ladder. “I’ve a task. I must go.”

“Now I can’t walk. Nor climb. My ankle is gone. She cursed me.” Her eyes were all. “I must move from here. From her.”

He maneuvered to the hallway. “Enjoy your vacation.”

This third task brought a less familiar district. A commercial zone at the highway ribbon. He didn’t get commercial jobs. There were specialists. Big trucks. Expansive equipment. A short notice commercial job meant an error to correct. Some embarrassment that couldn’t be charged to the project. And what was a ladder for but getting out from holes.

A little chilly around his kidneys. An empty building. Buildings changed hands. Grew and, sometimes, receded. Retooling didn’t indicate a problem. But there was no scaffold, no tent wrap, no banners enticing with what would come next. No trucks. No guys in headgear. The wrong type of empty. Coarsened, wind blown, behind gates too bent to shut. No one challenged his arrival. No security dusted his device. No one gave him the site procedures, the safety talk. Barren, caged from big box neighbors, the building could scarce exist in such disrepair.

He left his truck in view of the road – he could activate its hazard strip if needed. There were always patrols by the big stores.

The door stayed shut. It didn’t slide back. Its sensors fuzzed with dirt. He messaged the giver. A statement of presence. The ladder caught air. It tilted against his shoulder. He was confident with the ladder.

The man at the door had old skin, though his hair was dark and shapeless. Dressed for business, too formal for construction. But that need not make a misgiving. The task was present. The task was paid.

The door creaked against its runners, unlocked at some grip in the wall. That was okay. Security guys might need that. In case of a glitch. The man seemed surprised at air on his skin. His lips took a second to form. “The ladder.”

“You are Mr. Luck?”

His limbs fetched around in his clothes. “You arrive at the opportune moment. The time as booked.”

“The task wasn’t explicit.” The device in his pocket. “You said ‘ceiling work’?”

“I did say that. Come forward. That thing must be heavy.”

“It’s light for its size.”

Mr. Luck’s eyes took a slow journey. “Ingenious.”

The ladderman worked in people’s homes. Nothing was certain with people. Despite apps and therapeutics, they might still be inattentive. Over-focused. Less than specific. But a home at least had other homes, with better citizens, round it. The big stores weren’t so far out but this building felt noxiously lonely. Buildings shouldn’t be left to decay. Ordinances precluded negligence. And no signs of construction. Just this man overdressed.

“We’ll take the stairs,” said Mr. Luck. “There are elevators, but I am abundantly cautious. I’ll help with your burden.”

Mr. Luck walked backward upstairs, gripping the head of the ladder. He addressed himself to it awkwardly – squared shoulders, canted chest – his muscles unenthused by manual labor. The ladderman, lofting the feet, felt improper hurry. In reverse Mr. Luck moved quickly – the ladderman’s arms drawn up, his charge dragged from his care. The ladder dipped and bobbed and threatened the walls at each mezzanine. The stairs crumbed with grit. The lights filthy. He squinted along the ladder. He counted its bolts. He had to, or meet Mr. Luck’s eyes. The man subsumed his distaste for this work in exceptional effort. His eyes bulged. His cheeks darkened. Faint, cellulose moisture lit his brow. Each knuckle set, as though hands could do nothing but grip the ladder. Meld the ladder to his clumsy structure. The ladderman pulled back, even as he climbed forward. One shove and Mr. Luck would fall.

Likely this floor was a piece with the rest. A torn out tip of cracked pasteboard and split tiles. Wires hung from gaping runs where sockets had been salvaged. Broken-armed brackets drooped from ceilings shedding glass fiber. Daylight reluctant to pass dust-iced windows. Lights on backup supply barely there.

Breath captured by exertion, Mr. Luck indicated to set the ladder beside a metal case, clear of debris. The clock was ticking. Time only stretched so far. “You said ‘ceiling work’?”

“I did.” Mr. Luck coughed himself straight. “I said that. Excuse me. The dust.”

“What is this place?”

“We work the same platform. I’m a surveyor.”

The place was due work. First call the surveyor.

“My assistant brings the equipment. The ladder.”

“Are they expected?” He didn’t like to task share. The app encouraged collabs but the cut was thin.

“They had an accident. Not serious. But I’m left with no elevation.”

“Unfortunate.”

“It is unfortunate. I’m glad you could attend at short notice.” Mr. Luck tried a brogue at the lowest rung.

The ladderman flinched. “If you don’t mind I’ll see to the height work. Liability.”

With arch impatience Mr. Luck moved his foot from the ladder to the metal case, toeing open its latch. He stooped to pick a plastic box, creases sparking his business attire. “Remember these? No. You wouldn’t.”

A plastic box, caved and bent. The clock was ticking. There was barely ever time.

“It’s a video cassette case. Old technology. I store articles in it.”

The ladderman gripped the ladder. It must be his hand on the ladder. “I need to deliver the task, Mr. Luck. I have other givers.”

“You have your equipment. Your ladder. I’m a surveyor. I have my equipment.” He held the box two-handed. A jagged card bulged from its plastic clips. A man with a look of surprise and satisfaction. A building on fire. Unreadable monochrome text. Red-block words: Die Hard. It looked like nothing. It had no reference to anything known.

To abandon a task, to abscond, raised a penalty on the app. A downrating. To climb back from a downrating might take a year. In his history. His feed. He had to see every task through.

Mr. Luck gained outsize pleasure from opening the box. He squeezed each plastic catch with a delicate finger. He drew the hinged lid with steady pressure, shielding its splintered spine. “Of course I don’t have the video cassette,” he murmured. “That would be absurd.”

The box hummed with ticking, circular forms. Metal discs with beveled sides, each inlaid on its upper face with a round black screen, fading red as it captured light. The discs agitated, drawn, apparently, to Mr. Luck’s hands.

“That’s your equipment?” The ladderman didn’t know why he said it. He had only general ideas of surveying.

“If you’d be so good as to activate the safety features of your ladder, I need to deliver my task.”

“The ladder?”

A sadness to Mr. Luck’s mouth. “You see the void? Where the ceiling is disassembled. I have to set these devices along that concrete channel. It is,” he nodded, “a surveyor’s task.”

“I have no liability for people on the ladder.”

“I have liability.” That hardened voice from tightened skin. “My work involves height ordinarily. I’m familiar.”

Not right. An imposition. This man on the ladder. His brogues on the rungs. His soft, office fingers at its grips. And the clock was ticking. No task. Not yet. But another might come. “We’re nearly at time.”

“Then we should get on.” Mr. Luck’s shoulders probed beyond the fractured ceiling. The animation of his torso emphatic through his arms. Each few seconds, his hand would descend to select from the box. Each device, as he chose it, moved smoothly through his fingers, stretching brief red light across his skin.

“You should keep hold, at least with one hand.”

The headless spine paused in its mechanics. “Your concern is admirable. I’ll mention it in my review.”

“Thank you.” He couldn’t dismiss it. There were others who did this. Bigger trucks. Longer ladders. “Is your task completing?”

Again, that freeze, like talk through nitrogen. “Precise completion is hard to determine.” Mr. Luck moved down. Enough to show wary eyes. “Full deployment may not be sufficient.”

“I’m concerned for my next task.”

“You have a next task?”

“I may soon.”

Mr. Luck descended the ladder, a little flighty with the last steps.

The ladderman winced to hear metal sing out.

“Why don’t you complete for me?” Mr. Luck offered the box. “If you’re concerned to do something.”

“It’s my ladder.”

“It is your ladder.”

He knew the void above the tiles was dirty. Buildings were cleaned. But this building looked untouched since, perhaps, the last business moved out. Even closed space drew dust. Tied wires and silent conduits, their informational codes unscannable, hung bleakly from silted bolts, awaiting disposal. A pipe had ruptured, its long body panting wide. And these tight orbits of metal and glass spun keen red light across inert channels. Chained in lines, they seemed to call to each other. The ladderman picked one and gave a cry, the device hot and slippy against his palm.

“Alright up there?”

“What are these, Mr. Luck?”

“They measure. They interrogate.”

“There’s heat.”

“No more than an orthodontic scan.” Unforgivably, Mr. Luck nudged the ladder. Perhaps in excitement, he jogged its frame. Pressure echoed through the ladderman’s spine. “Set loose the rest. I know you’re busy.”

It wasn’t that simple. He wanted to tell the voice below it wasn’t the cakewalk as planned. Of course Mr. Luck began at the length of his arm, to play his devices outward. And they slipped and slalomed. They moved away. When the ladderman tried to place one between others a polarity force resisted. When he tried to extend the line, it moved beyond his reach. “Do they have a sequence?”

“What you say?”

“Mr. Luck, do they follow some order?”

“There is an order.” The careful voice. “They acknowledge each other. Function adapts to position.”

“So I can put them anywhere?”

“Set them loose, as I told you.” The ladder trembled again. “A busy man is best methodical.”

The ladderman completed what he could. He encouraged the little discs along the channel, hesitant of their sanguine light, sensing their communication in his fingers. From this small box, it seemed a great many devices. Or perhaps their oscillation multiplied them. Shifting back to daylight, he thumbed the wounded card clipped to the box lid. Its grainy give, nothing to signify what it meant. No connection with anything served to his off-work moments. Perhaps it was a joke, of a kind. No building caught fire.

Mr. Luck displayed needless caution, taking hold of the box. The box was empty. The little machines doing no doubt valuable labor. “You wouldn’t remember.” With conviction. “You never saw a video cassette.”

No task in the app. Its vibration absent. “I have to go.” It seemed insufficient. “I’m sure you have tasks.”

“In what world would that concern you?” Mr. Luck watched the ladder fold down. “Do you think of the future?”

That wasn’t a question. “I like to help people. I’m grateful to the app.”

“Yes, they need help.” Mr. Luck looked to the broken ceiling, as though called by his machines.

A ring of sour flesh burned the ladderman’s neck. The task had run long. Off the clock. “Have a successful day.”

“I shall.”

The ladder clinked and shivered against his shoulder. Strong, with ready muscles, its weight should be easy. His chest shouldn’t sting. He shouldn’t watch his feet, for fear of falling.

The ladder stowed, the truck seat closed around him. The app stayed quiet. Perhaps he should eat. The ladderman let the truck take decisions. Each touch of the wheel brought heat. The feel of slippy, agitated metal.

The truck stopped for patrols. It was mandatory.

The young officer walked from his vehicle with smooth, perceptible pressure. Embodied rules, no need to lay out where his authority came from. He noted the ladderman’s license. His app credentials.

“I appreciate the truck’s a little old. I’m working to make a trade.”

“Got rust on the rims. It stopped a little sluggish. That’s not why we pulled you.”

Cops were always plural. “I hope there’s nothing wrong.” He wanted to go earnest. He sounded scared. Cops didn’t move from their vehicles without reason.

“You just came from this address.” The data he skimmed from the app.

“I had a task. Height work.”

The cop’s face lost mobility. “Says that on the truck. We got the feed. You drive in, drive out. What height work?”

Deep in monochrome text, terms and conditions said tasks were subject to conventional analytics. To gauge patterns of use. To improve the app. Anyhow, this task was commercial. “With a fellow specialist. A surveyor. Exploratory work. You saw me drive out.”

“We saw.”

However the cop might play it next got lost in a devastation of concrete. A blast so energetic it filled the street.

Instant, the cop acquired rapid, precise instructions. These rare events were prepped. Sirens swarmed the corner. Black tubes filled fireproof gloves, wrapped on hard hands.

The ladderman went five steps when the first blow took him. Sour-tasting blacktop scorched his face. Obedient, he let the kick come in, knowing soon they’d hoist him away. The truck burst open. The ladder broke on the ground. All the while, the cops said the same thing. The same thing.

They Don’t Bury You In Gowns Like These

Written by Leonydes  Matis. Posted in Poetry. 

I’m in a long, bright white tunnel,
I pretend I’m not in a coffin.
A prince whispers in my ear;
no, it’s actually Prince –
These paper shorts feel scratchy
and the way they are slightly 
twisted off-center makes me
glad they are temporary. 
Isn’t everything temporary?
Let’s go crazy.
Hold still – as still as you can.
It’s the disembodied tenor voice 
of a digital wizard
Medicinal drums of the MRI
bang around me, humming
around the spaces in oversized 
headphones – my auditory shield.
Magnetic eyes scan my body
Let’s go crazy.
I wish I had worn socks.
There is a scuff mark in my
light tunnel, depreciating
its ethereal value, a fulsome bone white.
It’s a coffin again. I pretend
I am at peace. I can hear the machine
covering me with dirt. 
Let’s go crazy.
I’m not ready to go yet. Scan again.
Eyes closed, I attempt to make a human 
connection to the machine, as if
trying to lay myself bare –
vulnerable to its heated eyes.