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I drifted off before finishing my drink and slumped into a murky half dream. The images still played: indelible, a visual vocabulary we already knew, learned by rote. I was in a building. I was on an elevator. I ran down a fiery hallway. Yippee ki yay, motherfucker.

An hour passed, maybe, and I surfaced just briefly, a shiver, a flickering force field of electromagnetic blue. I was cold, gut sick, trapped beneath a Dal�oft steel beam I could not budge. Doubt, promise. A watercolor wash of regret. I regretted thinking maybe we should bomb the hell out of them, all of them. I regretted not knowing what my mother eats for dinner. I regretted there were no black people in my address book. I regretted how easily I'd learned to live with the weight I'd gained, the tight-waisted khakis, the young buds of my father's old-man breasts. I regretted watching Ricky Strauss push my kid sister to the ground, and me standing there laughing with the rest of them. I regretted having nothing to show. I regretted my horseshit job, all jargon and laptops and Emperor's New Clothes. I regretted passing my Death sitting hungry on the sidewalk and miming sorry, no change. I regretted that the woman who loves me lies in bed nightly, hoping, hoping, waiting for me to make up my mind.

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• Jerry Cavanaugh
• Hunter Snodgrass
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• Miles Davis

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Jerry Cavanaugh studied biology at a small Eastern college and has worked as a veterinary assistant, museum exhibit developer, and copywriter. He lives in Seattle and has yet to publish in major magazines.