A Thinning Light

The light is thinning. A ragged man struggles to carry an unboxed large plasma screen. He is walking it home, he has no home still, he is walking it, but now it's raining the TV becomes a slippery umbrella. There is so little light to be had, no one goes to the park not even to stare at the sky, not even to walk a dog, not even to smoke a cigarette huddled behind a dripping tree trunk. A TV slides down a slick grassy bank. A bad day for minstrels, knights and stray unicorns. An old woman, hands wrapped in fingerless wool, tugs at an abandoned plasma screen. After sliding down a grassy bank she gives up. Beetles spill out of a ruck of turf. Her heels disappear into a gray light. The beetles take shelter under a large television.