Oh, you’re one of those, she said. Yes, I said, sadly, I am.
And then I said, You’re not, I take it. She had just returned
from a surgery involving the known world. Her eyes
were visioning… big data, one would imagine. Is there
a warehouse large enough to hold all the names of the dead?
She could have been slightly drunk. I, on the other hand,
was on the verge, all day. In an hour. Near a window open
to a grave and the moon. The odds of she and I forming polite
society were equivalent to the roar of a nearby party, a party
of the beautiful but not the saved. I guess I’ll be going then,
I said, to which she said “You wood.” I permutated reality, until
one of the “o’s”, the one on the right, fell out and was replaced by
“ul”. I’m desperately trying to take some shape other than all shapes.
But I don’t fit in myself comfortably. What remains outside is grief.
