Give
or take a person. Give a person.
Take
a person.
It is so much easier to love at a
distance
when it’s cold or scared
out, so much easier
to yell at the radio alone to
suppose
the length of the shadow
has any significance beyond the angle
implied. The articulation assumed.
This
person is overcome with disbelief that she
should
live in times like these. During every atrocity, now I realize,
someone was falling
in
or out of love someone struggled
with money or burnt dinner, someone told a joke.
Someone
may even have still marveled
at the many different reflections of light called
something like green.
Someone
was early for an appointment and waited awkwardly;
someone
was running late and climbed, breathless, onto a bus.
Someone was tired, slept at last, woke again.
Maybe
that’s the point.
In
November, a woman in all white seated at the front of the bus announces: notice
the leaves are still on the trees.
She names the months. What was going on in 1994?
I’m
not sure now, and never will be, if that was her question or mine.
