Margaret, I wonder: do you still find words delicious? Do you savor expressions, hoard grammars, luxuriate in the warmth of your breath as you speak? Do you consume dictionaries in your pajamas by the air conditioning? I find little time to read these days. I sit in an armchair and stare at pages. The words don’t dance like they used to. I imagine all kinds of excuses. Fatigue. Distractions.
I convince myself I deserve the luxury of laziness.
I conjure up reasons to pace the apartment. A fresh pot of coffee will do it. Maybe if I look through old photos.
I dust a lot. I find reasons to scrub pots and clean hair out of the drains. I write letters and forget to mail them. I carry them around in a shoulder bag, and think about how the words age, echo, no longer mean what I wanted them to. The paper will not yellow for years, but in my mind the sheets disintegrate to dust.
I went to the gym last Thursday. I did my penance. My sit-ups. I stared at the girl on the elliptical and watched her iambics. Unstress, STRESS. I ran to the Lake, listening to songs that kept pace with my feet on the concrete. I took off my shoes. My socks. Put my keys inside the sneakers and felt the warm moistness of the soles. When I jumped in the clear water, I lost my breath and bounced on the sand slapping my chest to bring blood to the surface, and insisted to myself that it would all go into the store of my memories. That I could connect to that moment some later day. As the sun baked my shoulders dry, meanings congealed.
I sat on the rocks and dried out like a lizard and watched the skyline for changes in the cloudscape.
No changes to report.
There were thunderstorms on Saturday night and then an e. coli warning on Sunday, so I didn’t go to the Lake. Instead, I drank bourbon out of a blue coffee mug and watched the Discovery channel. I learned about geography. About the airborne laser.
Maybe my days of counting syllables are over. Maybe I should take up accounting other, more conventional objects of value. Would you despair in this? Or would you secretly delight in my surrender? It would be a relief if you said yes to the latter, because then I could fight something other than your ghost. Fighting an idea gives some body to what is otherwise an abstract pain. The loneliness tugs and chafes like elastic bands.
You left books, you know. And when I come across them in my pacings, the creased titles scream out to me. I think it ironic that you should torture me with words. I feel stripped.
And now the nights have crickets, which is sad. I hear them over the metallic grinding of my poor malfunctioning ceiling fan, which has been working overtime in this overheated summer.
I haven’t changed my calendar in three weeks. It’s still on July 5. What backflips the anticipation of autumn puts me into, as these summertime routines pulse along in their quiet rhythms. Their teeming clouds of insects. Their easy compliance with versification, vocalization.
Margaret, I mean this, I saw you on the El last week, riding the Pink Line to Pilsen. I ate an empanada and bought a tweed hat at the vintage store to get my mind off the apparition. I heard that you’re in Texas. I heard that you’re still on the road. I heard that you asked for me.
I think the heat is getting to me. That I need to rub my eyes less often. That I need to do more sit-ups and stay hydrated. Because you left books, Margaret. Creased titles on my shelves. And I can’t get any work done in this heat with your words staring at me across a wide expanse without knowing if you still crave them. Because once your desire for words is exhausted, how else can you desire anything?
