You can do this, let no one tell you otherwise. Even that cat grinning up there in the tree.

When you took that oath to die for your country, in your khaki shorts and elementary schoolboy cap, did ever you think that the day of reckoning would come? Or was your head filled with the dinner appointment you were late for, your wife back in Mindanao wishing you would spend less time away, the paperwork piled high on your congressman's desk?

The most favored son will return with a thousand pomengranates, ten oxen and a sack of gold coins. The father will herald his son's triumphant travels while the mother will stifle her desire to ask, what of the daughter who never made it home?

They will all look like angels onstage, spouting swear words as they sing lullabies. A disco ball and a song about an illegal hair salon in somebody's apartment in Norway - the man-child who weaves this magic reminds you of another boy you left long ago.

The girl in the polka-dot dress will take your hand and urgently say, "You were right to get out of the city. It's breaking me down, each year, it's breaking me down."

You will wonder if that was an aberration. Otherwise it would be a sign of the empty beds and long nights to come.

You will wonder why you never find New Yorker cartoons funny. The universe is telling you to give up the ghost. Listen.

She sheds a tear for the lost city. The world goes on, the stages fill and empty, and she doesn't even know.