Open up: out comes Psychobabble!

Yes!

I will click these keys like a heartbroken praying mantis, and I will tell you, dear children, of the great many things that my eyes have seen, and that my tongue has tasted.

And oh, it has tasted.

Tonight, I have tasted ash and cold fingers. It must be November, God damn it! I drove and drove and drove. The heat sputtered out of plastic vents like smokey-swirly perfume, crept up my leg and down my shirt. Never once did its flames reach my nose and hands. They were solid glass, no kidding.

My fingers were frozen stalks of celery locked to the steering wheel, my nose brass-button-shiny.

I was driving under the embryonic haze of November; the month had just been born six days before. It was an infant, bouncing along like a pumpkin ready to explode.

And, so: Psychobabble. It’s all I know how to say, these days.

Hours before I was to find myself piloting my flaming vessel, there was the sip-sipping of expensive tea and Psychobabble with the man who once turned to my mother with lust in his eyes. He said, “Drink this tea. It’s great tea. Expensive, too.”

Said I: “Certainly.”

I was, after all, not unaccustomed to drinking great, expensive tea.

When my mind stirred and deflated and erupted and splattered on the wall like pancake batter, I dropped my tea, spilled it all over my absolute favorite pair of regal slacks.

If you’ll recall, I went through hell to get those slacks.

I won’t, though. Recall, that is.

I dropped a blood-boiling cup of great, expensive tea on my own lap because I was inundated with colorful visions and the regaling of Psychobabble. It was simply too much at one time, and every part of me fluttered and fell.

And with it went the tea.

I should have finished that tea, I think now, instead of letting it burn these thighs of mine — for there were many cold moments to be lived in later that night.

If you’ll recall, the newborn November night would go on to freeze my fingertips and nose.

I left the home of my father and drove through roads that part deep forests. The sky was solid black. I drove on these roads under the starry solid black until I came upon a field of corn.

I got out and walked. The moon had dipped behind an ominous clan of trees and said good-night. I said, “Good-night to you, too.”

It was a shame that He left me, because I could not recall a time in my life when I’d seen the moon so large and so close, so yellow and angry. It was the color of tennis ball found in a puddle of mud. It dripped into the atmosphere, sleepy and warm.

I was, however, very cold. At least, the tips of my fingers and nose were.

I said: “Tough it out!” They obeyed like little children eager to earn dessert.

Dessert, as it turns out, was corn.

And this is when I hoped for tea and warm things. I hoped for them not to spill on my lap and burn the legs that help me walk, but to rest in my stomach like firewood and keep an old man lit up in the solid black starry nothing.

I stepped on dead corn and felt the crunch under my partially-animated legs. It was a satisfying sound. It sounded like stepping on the bones of dead kings. I stepped and crunched every which way, until the land ended and the corn gave way to untraceable nighttime. It was then I crunched in the direction of home. My fingertips clacked together like brittle piano keys. My nose hung from my face like a sloping glacier.

I piloted my vessel in the way of my winter palace. I said good-night to the fields that raised me. They were utterly silent in return.

I am still cold, but my fingers have found use. They are busied with my only occupation: I clack and clack this Psychobabble for you, dear children.

November already, huh. God damn. I’ll have to see about putting this nose to use. I think now that I will assign it to smell the incense the burns to the right of my skull. It smells . . . yes, it smells exactly like a woods stove burning happily. I am happy, too, with the knowledge that such incense exists. I am also a tired old man. November already. What a shit-shitting world, let me tell you.