1.

An object with the appearance of a cylindrical metal tank approximately twenty times the size of a large stockpot sitting atop a proportionally enlarged café chair has been placed near the curb with a “For Sale” sign pasted to the side of it facing passing traffic. I do not know what this object is; therefore, I do not need it.

2.

An object with the appearance of a cylindrical metal tank approximately twenty times the size of a large stockpot sitting atop a proportionally enlarged café chair has been placed near the curb with a “For Sale” sign pasted to the side of it facing passing traffic. I do not know what this object is; nonetheless, for precisely that reason it is possible that, without my having realized it, it is exactly what I have been needing all this time.

3.

The coughing began nearly three weeks ago, now, but it was more recently that I first noticed my kerchief, when I drew it away from my mouth, stained with blood like a blooming rose (pardon the hackneyed metaphor, but I am far too tired to do better). I have lost weight, which at first seemed like not such a problem, since before all of this began a reasonable argument could have been made that I had grown overlarge, but now things have gone too far. I look like a deflated balloon, like a half-empty bag of clattering bones. It is no surprise, in any event: the mere sight of food, indeed the very thought of it, makes me want to wretch. R––––, in the meantime, insists that a good night’s sleep will fix me up, but how can I get a good night’s sleep shivering from dusk ‘til dawn in a pool of my own perspiration? Anyway, there’s no use hoping against hope. One of these days, perhaps tomorrow, I will instruct her to summon the doctor…

Eli S. Evans is a writer who is not dead yet (unless, of course, he has died in the time since he composed this author bio).

Image: Decisive Pink, Wassily Kandinsky, 1932