First, The Egg

You have made the bed. You have folded the clothes and walked the dog and straightened up the closet so that nothing is on the floor, so that your sweaters are stacked neatly on the top shelf just as they should be. There is, you think, some vague value in finally learning to be neat, even at your age. You have read the book of stories he gave to you before leaving, and washed the shirt that smelled like his aftershave. Your suitcase is empty. You stare from the window at the trees and flowers and birds below. Yours will be serene memories of perfect days: early purple orchids; a Peacock butterfly; a wild periwinkle vine, its spirals interlacing in uniform thickness. Yours will be days not subject to the pull of their own weight.

Life's Basic Plot

There are things we do when the other is not around. We go out, we take pictures; we drink tea and smoke cigarettes. We stay out late and wake up early and meet people the other will never know: fascinating people and boring people and people who talk nothing but crazy all day long. We talk about the other to the new people we have met, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. Sometimes we talk crazy about the other and then feel crazy for having done so. Sometimes the other is not mentioned for an entire day and we feel guilty. There are small things the other will see in a day and remember for a lifetime: a crushed beer can, a bum asleep on the street, the movement of a stranger's hand. These things we will never know, they belong to the other in a permanent kind of way. Sometimes we can try and steal these things from the other. We can ask about the color of a woman's skirt, the shape of her blouse, the smell of her skin. But these things will never belong to us, and there is simply nothing we can do about it.


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