Is Memory,

as they pretend,

mother of the Muse?

— or Forgetting,

who says, My friend,

I know

you’ve told me before

about love, death,

solitude—and what

were those other things?—but

tell me again.

To have you back

for an hour, oh even

in a room of dream,

and to say

something to change us

back to what we never

quite were—

would it be Love,

like one match

lit against winter,

like a key

turned in the ocean?

‍

There is no time to write them any more, those long, slow letters left on the desk for days while one paragraph hardened, then another, and consigned to a delivery that took weeks. And few have survived, since they were burned after reading or in the hours just before death. Now you find them mostly in movies about times before there were telephones. The young woman takes one to a window, breathing deeply, because she knows that to read it she will need the help of the whole sky.

The ambulance --

behind, ahead? – sounds

not too close, actually.

But we pull over,

obsequious --

wouldn't want Death

annoyed with us.