A new thing.

I stole a shirt off the back of an angel and he turned down to me with tears...pooling the plates of his eyes like pale dinner blood...he turned his sweet obedient face (angels must do what we say) and asked for it back. I kept the thing. I kept the thing because it was an angels shirt and is probably worth something. Like one holds on to the deed of Graceland but sells the house of a haunted raped baby cheap. (Angels and ghosts are different things.)

The angel mentioned the cold as an argument. He mentioned his modesty as a plea. He mentioned his fair, hairless skin as a medical reason. "For my health..." he said. "I will burn." he said.

You would have laughed here, too. "An angel does not burn. Besides, it's chilly out. You're more likely to freeze." I spoke to him with my coldest face. Again he mentioned the cold as an argument. I said nothing else.

He offered some miracle, any miracle.

I said nothing else, thinking of him as a genie, thinking also of calling him that to his face for offering me a wish. A wish. A genie. I said nothing else.

He offered me money. He threatened me Hell. He offered me Heaven forever. "Heaven forever", he said. "Take it. It's true. It's there and you do want in. Everyone does." I thought of a country club membership salesman-his clipboards and papers. I said nothing else.

I wondered why an angel threatens Hell before offering Heaven. I said nothing else.

I think, had this been millions of years before and had I been some new thing writing the book on new things for new things with new things no one had seen because things were new, and not even things were things...yet...I think then, that if this angel had allowed his shirt to be stolen then, by me-a new thing (shirts, of course, being an old thing) that while watching the angel turn his back and show me his bare shoulders and his rough thick wings rising from his back like sores, like soft feathered buildings, that I may have written the word "tired" and also the word "thief" and also the concept, the word for the concept of teaching some other thing not to give another thing the thing it wants most from you.