A GROUNDING FOR THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS

Or perhaps the story starts with books on her table. When the man breaks in, she's sleeping. Tomorrow: an exam. Tomorrow: a paper due. She's half-asleep, the sound of someone in the room soft as turning pages. First, he tells her, I heard a noise. By "he" is meant the handyman. And when there is no noise to hear, he bolts the door. He grinds her face into the wood. A cardboard box kicked. A hand bitten. That he will kill her if the night stays gray too long, a kind of a priori knowledge. He read Kant in prison, comics too black and white, dime store pulp too literal in its black and blue. There is an argument for anything, he says: to drown the small brown dog, to swipe the wallet, even to unlock the girl's apartment where she is falling in her sleep.