I am in my living room, listening to something electronic on the stereo. I am walking around straightening things up, shelving books, stacking magazines, when I notice that wires seem to have come out of my ceiling. Along the corners of the room are the speaker wires I've run, but they are now slack, hanging loosely from corner to corner.

I get a chair so I can put them back when I remember that I didn't run them along the walls, I ran them through the ceiling, so this shouldn't have happened. I look closer and see that there are other wires visible, too—electrical conduits, some phone wires, CAT5 network cabling. Where did all this come from?

In my office it is even worse. The walls have taken on a translucency, and are webbed with wires. I don't remember installing all of this; where did it come from? What are these glowing things? And then I know that the glowing wire is actually a scent trail left behind by a colony of ants.

I'm looking at a bookcase, and I see cobwebs covering it. As I approach to clear them away, I see they are tiny filaments, almost invisible, connecting the books to other books, and then reaching across the space to me. A book which was a gift from a lover has an additional thread, golden, which stretches through the wall and outside the house.

I glance down at my chest, and I am surrounded by a nimbus of silver wires, some so thin as to barely exist, some thick as cords, all radiating away from me, connecting me to the objects in my home, or to points beyond my vision. I reach down and gingerly touch one of the thickest, which radiates a silvery light. As I do I hear, as if from a distance, a woman's voice. It is a woman I love, and love deeply. A sense of contentment washes through me, and I let go.

I can barely see the world now, all I can see are the wires.

Previously published August, 2002