You could write songs, J. tells me.

I don't think I could. Shaking the margarita, I'll soon add fresh lime and orange juice, invert the lime rind into a boat and float some Grand Marnier.

Kendra, you really could, he said.

J. is insisting now and I have to add a dash of nuance: I can write stuff, sure. I can swap words around so they're slightly more interesting than the first time they played through my head, but writing songs must be something different and closer to poetry.

I tell J. that not all writers are gonna be good at all writing. Some people hear the notes, but I just see images and do my best to describe and understand. I think song writing is something else, I said. I see a creative guitar finger dipping into the fluid imagination and coming up with pretty words, slick, shining, and memorable.

Done with the drink, I stab a straw in it, and say, suck that my friend. I hand the pale green frothy drink to T.

So tonight while I catch the soft, cottony smell of laundry soap as I snap a towel from the basket, a phrase jumps out about Japan. The country is a pit of death where stiff cold limbs snag at desperate survivors.

I look up song writing on the Internet and find a recipe for generating everything from titles to lyrics to choruses to the very last verse. We'll see. Maybe I'll concoct something about Lily's creamy, smoke-tipped fur, amber eyes, and illness. Nothing's perfect.