Muddy’s broad brow wrinkled as she inspected my countenance. “My gracious, Eddie, but you do look peaked. Another bad night?”

I acknowledged the accuracy of her observation with a melancholy nod. “Slumber—that blessed but fickle benefactress—withheld her sweet nepenthe from my soul.”

She regarded me for a long moment before inquiring, “Do I take that to mean ‘yes’?”

“That is, indeed, the signification I intended.”

She patted my cheek. “Poor, troubled boy,” she commiserated. “I cannot help but believe that you would sleep more soundly if you spent less time locked up in that stuffy room, brooding on death and premature burial and whatnot. Perhaps you should try writing something … cheerier. Why, look at that delightful poem by Mr. Longfellow, ‘The Village Smithy.’ Surely you could compose something equally charming if you would only put your mind to it.”

The earnest, if misguided, simplicity of my dear, well-meaning Muddy elicited from my lips a soft, indulgent laugh—whose tone, however, was not untinged with a rueful awareness that the man of creative genius must ever be misunderstood, even by those most sympathetic to his strivings.

“Oh Muddy!” I exclaimed. “Can I not make you see? The true artist must endeavor to give shape to the teeming phantasmagoria of the soul—to those swirling shapes and shrouded forms that spring, like a hideous throng of netherworld-demons, from the dark inner reaches of his own harrowed heart and anguished brain!”

Muddy’s eyes blinked several times as she stared at me wordlessly. “Perhaps a nice cup of tea might help,” she said at last.

As I sat at our table, imbibing the fragrant brew which Muddy had dispensed, my vitals felt suffused with an invigorating heat, as though the fire which burned in the belly of the cookstove now blazed within the depths of my own bowels.

Draining my cup, I sprang from the seat and clutched Muddy to my breast. “I must depart on a matter of the utmost urgency,” I cried “Your potion has inflamed me to the core.”

“Oh my,” she replied, placing the fingertips of one hand to her lips. “Perhaps you should have allowed it to cool.”

Her dear miscomprehension brought a burst of hilarity from my throat. Striding across the kitchen, I paused at the doorway and faced her. “I cannot state for a certainty at which hour I will return,” I exclaimed. “But rest assured that, when next you behold me, I will have acquitted myself in a manner befitting a Poe!”

“Don’t forget your hat, dear,” replied the ever-devoted woman. “We may be in for some more weather.”