Where were we

Where were we? I was sitting with my back to the windows that line the south wall in the dining room. Back to the gray light on the rainy noon. Vaughn sitting across from me. KC sitting to her right. Dash in his high chair to the right of KC. Between me and Vaughn, the tuna casserole she helped her mom make. Different this time because they used elbows instead of bow-ties. This is as good as it's ever come out. We talk about how we haven't had it in a while, and how maybe that's why it seems so good. Or maybe it's because we're all so hungry. KC cuts up tiny pieces to feed Dash. As much tumbles out of his mouth as stays in. He likes it too. It's quiet, now, across the street. In the lot being excavated in preparation for a new two-family house. Rain coming down hard enough it forced the work to stop. The rain as benevolent force. Vaughn's through and ready for dessert. Today she chooses Edy's orange & cream low-fat fruit bar. What we used to call a popsicle. I get it for her before either KC or I are done with our meals because she's been good today. She'll be upstairs setting up a party for her stuffed animals before KC and I start on our dessert. But now, where were we? We were all at the table and KC was shooting glances at me as Vaughn was chatting away at us. KC could tell I wasn't registering a word. My mind more than half elsewhere. I'm thinking of Dale Smith's Black Stone: "What we are to each other is locked into language—" and there may be a sense in which that's true, that bears closer inspection. Language may be, as Heidegger had it, "the house of being," but I refuse to believe we're locked in. On a hot day, where I'm sitting, I can feel the sun through the window behind me as its heavy rays shawl my shoulders. I could turn around in my chair and see the house next door, the rain flowing out the gutter, dropping to the driveway and running down garageward. I could see the cars blurring by over the glossy black pavement with its shiny yellow demarcation, blurring by under branches with deep green leaves drooping under the weight of too much water. I could see the empty, muddy lot across the street where more and thicker trees used to be. I could turn knowing that KC and Vaughn and Dash are turning with me, and it's not quite because of language. They are with me inside me, beyond where words can go. What if we could kick down all seven doors in the house of being, what would it be? Now what about the lyric as phenomenological inquiry?