dearest,
i still make charcoal rubbings of half a gravestone. star. bird. professor of metaphysics. i still draw leaves gathering in the wind. i am not and remain the woman who swam with a thousand minnows. i am not and remain the woman who kissed you on the wooden floor. the students believe, as we turn to kenyon, that happiness is brief, discursive, even unwarranted. when rain meets the sea i disappear from grief. the child ( whose mother has passed out from drink ) walks alone through the dunes. i walk our greyhound near the water: flecked with sails, distant, quiet. in fact, i feel quite alone in all of this. you made the sky closer & my wrists hum / from memory, i can still trace the scar on the back of your neck / from memory still your persistent sweeping away, washing, holding. though—no-coming, no-going. here the room is the color of bourbon. waves arrive, become present then lost. the mattress is only a sculpture of the mattress. the birds, woven. the days leading into winter are heavy with words & jagged brush. when i say your name aloud the leaf stems quiver. here i am in the wake of losing you & my handwriting leaves cinders.