20

an invitation on faded turquoise: open something which is closed: the endless answers, the how many times, the shades of shadow along the wall, on the grass, shifting in the breeze, hours passing, holding, resting on it, resting, but staying closed: asking of seeing an answer: not wanting to, but having it, the heaviness that comes from the too close of losing, missed connections and a small blue notebook of otherwises: what would it mean, to renounce such a place? I can't do it, can't swim in the shallows of things, paddle from one room to the next, open again to the entanglement of it all, lifting a handful of hairs off one of the couch pillows this morning, impossible to know whose but there aren't many options, finishing a book, closing it after it's final page about death, the moments before and wanting to know: and who could, the circumstances that make nothing else possible, that write history in the tiniest font, scrambled and served with salt, pepper, and piment d'ville on the plates my grandma gave me that as a kid I'd thought were out of style, not my kind of funk, but now, in the pale of my own space remind me of her, holding them after a phone call about poetry, accepting the limits, the need to engage with it all, the difficulty and the more difficult thing: not writing, not unzipping the afternoon at the hidden seam, not making something of it: the waiting, the wait