There is nothing to do for the fact that wraps around her.
She stands at the kitchen window.
She presses her palms against the cold window.
She conjures the mind of a man,
the one who loves her
She sees herself across a furious street,
waving a while then standing still and awkward.
She sees her face falling away,
the fingers curling.
The cars are gone. There is only a noisy wind.
A flickering patch of color. A piece of cloth.
That is not good, she says, It is less than enough.
She takes a sheet of paper. She prints her name.
She looks around the room, around the house.
Where will he look?
What book will he read?
She doesn’t know where to put it.
The soup. She puts it in the soup.
He comes kissing her home and she serves him the soup.
Now am I happy, she says, then common sense
comes tumbling out of the ceiling.
She thinks about the sloshing in the stomach.
She knows the letters of her name are lost.
This is conveyed by the way one hand
takes slowly hold of the other
and the introduction of blue in the main lights.
Tell me this moment, she says, you love me forever.
I do, he says. This moment I love you forever.
This is guile, she says, Sir, is it not?
Have you been reading Hardy?
Sir, I have.
Then you must understand how things can change.
But will you remember me a little while,
more than a piece of color, a patch of cloth?
We’ll miss you greatly, yes, and speak of you often,
as you’ve heard others often spoken of.
There will be things around the house to remind us.
At this moment the curtain starts to fall.
Four feet from the stage it sticks.
Here we see the legs and feet of the actors
shifting nervously, turning and turning back,
uncertain how to leave the scene
without unwanted laughter, if not with grace.
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