Most postcards never get written. She stands, hoping, in front of the rack, thinking that something of august will fit in a box. Later, it’s taped to the wall on its back. I don’t know how other people act or age, but I mail off each concluding day as I often reach to turn the page in this basic paper ocean, where nothing will stay. She counts upon the volume of collapse and exhaust. A flaw in every structure and a light to illuminate the outlines. She is winking, perhaps; I cannot see the glancing off the lake in the night. My miracles rely upon the spleen. There is a dangling about to drop into the glory gloom of spit and queen. I’ll know to diminish when you stop. The animal behind the discursive grid will roar for chaos. The end of substance, the dash of thought. Beds are always in between the concept of a door and the feeling of a casket. Reminding you of what they are not. “Don’t give up here,” she urges with grace but forgetfulness. I would believe her but the ornamental nature of my tired face interferes with faithfulness, in a canyon paper cut. I turn the plastic wheel to adjust my Faustian hearing aid in the mean gray of a ghostly television room where a drunk river of subtraction is nightly laid across an evening table set for doom. Each day, mailed off into the limits of a sinking ship, returns in shadow cursive, a memory, like melting snow. She takes it from the postbox and puts it on her lip. A foot sticks out, then disappears. That’s all we’ll ever know.
Photograph of poem draftPhotograph of poem draft