How can I sleep, leaving so much unread. Notice, it’s not a question. How can I leave here with so much unwritten. Again, no one asking. Why should I climb aboard a train I bought no ticket for, clacking toward a stop I want not. I like when my chest goes up, from the down. No desire to leave it there, flat.
Porter, tell someone else this is their stop. Or another, “Here we are now.” I’m nowhere near done. In fact, I do not remember agreeing to a single –
You know what? [first question] I can carry that, if this is my damn stop. Already the trees that flew past my window for days are missed missed missed. I would climb them. Would. Wood. What I desire. And trees. I recall a lifetime of such speculation, but God, these bags are filled with gravity. And [second question] how far am I to drag them?
There were as many books before you were born. Yes, but don’t tell me that, not now. And as much unwritten – oh please, no more questions. Notice, no one was asking one.
She listened, while I said things. None of them [my things] made sense. Even to me, truth be known [but it wasn’t]. It [my words] made sense, not. But she was listening, so on I went. Out the window, beside her left eyebrow some geese migrated south. I saw them but she didn’t, because she listened.
A jet landed. I saw the wheels come out, and the leaves in that tree turned orange. [Still she listened] and on, like bees I droned, making honey.
Flipping a page from October to November she fixed her gaze on my babble. I missed not a beat, but many points were lost and the rain barrel filled with cold water.
White flecks of ice frosted the pane, and with one breath the chill was gone. It was not my breath, but hers. In back of it was the word, “What?”
What of all her musing if it comes to this? Socket and jaw, lips that shall not kiss beyond the compass of her time and place. Recall the sadness of her thoughtful face, the scratch of quill in candled bliss?
Oh, I do, I do. And few knew her my friend as we did. ‘Tis so, agreed! To what end shall we commit this find, will it rest beside that of her husband, but blessed above his station? This, I would intend.
Well then, let us carry them to the tomb where they shall forever reside, in whom they have believ’ed. None wrote like her, nor jested as he. But let God himself confer, Yorick’s wife wrote verse when in the womb.
