The glow of the goldfish above the kitchen table warms me, and the heat of bread whose flavor reaches my finger ends, and the cleanliness of my towels and toes and floors. Those who’ve known me on street corners or vomiting between profundities in the dark places behind taverns, those who have led me over rocks in blue dawns to sit shivering on picturesque beaches munching cold hot dogs in congealed fat may assume I’ve sold out. But it was never cold hot dogs that drove me, nor the sight of the picturesque sands. It was the muscles of your thighs, the warmth of your armpits, the thump of your blood in my ear. It was flesh, not philosophy.

Now there is no flesh left that supersedes my own, and so the truth comes out. I have bowed in every direction. I have followed whoever would lead me. In my time I have believed everything for the sake of particular veins in the forearms of particular people. But now the only blood that answers when I say, “What do you want?” is my own.

It’s ridiculous to discover at this age that there is something left in me that wants, that needs, that prefers, and that would rather. I call the blood of all those others my loves, and I call this blood of mine my own religion. It is the cult of the warm room and the clean bed, a sect devoted to the smoothing of toenails in the bath and the inspection of the garlic shoots in the window pots.

If there is an ecclesiastical ferocity in the performance of my rituals it can be attributed to the zeal of the convert. I’m not at all evangelical. I don’t want anybody else worshipping the shine of my doorknobs, or the act of shining, or the stiff old gray sock that does the polishing. The goldfish are a more appreciative audience anyway. I have put them in the pickle jug and placed them on the red table so the lamp shines through their water and lights them. I like the look of it. I like sitting there while the bread is baking to fantasize their fantasies.

This precious nest of mine is comparatively new. I didn’t grow into it, I made it. Turned in my tracks one day and decided to go no further. Or was it that the track ended? I’ve forgotten a lot, though I pride myself on remembering. Sometimes someone sitting innocently across from me over cups will smile and say, “Remember…?” Then something slits me neatly from skull to crotch and leaves my two spread halves gaping bloodily at the fish.