She reached her hand out of the car that was taking her to the airport, I took it and our hands clenched, tight, intertwined.  Was this the solid hand of assurance, or the hand of dismissal? I wake each morning before dawn my hand still asleep, clenched into her hand. As the car that was taking her to the airport pulled away she waved. Was that a wave of goodbye, or was it a wave washing everything away, even the road I was standing on, even memory. Once, as we lay in bed, she asked me, What is spooning? This is spooning, I answered, and folded her bones into mine.

Another thing I know for sure is that Einstein said love was a spooky entanglement. That explains why I cannot stop talking to you even though you are gone. Love is just spooky action at a distance, he said, and dismissed it. Einstein observed love but could not explain it. I know that when the phone rings at three in the morning and I roll over in bed and answer, and it is your voice that I hear, I am dreaming so I hang up. I may be tangled in the sheets but I'm not crazy. I sit on a bench in the evening by the lake. I love this hour I say to you, the way the lake darkens and the sky lightens. You answer, I love the way you speak to me, although I am not really here—I love that about you. I know you do, I answer, I know.

You, ballerina, spin on the edge of the sharpest desire. You can't catch me, you say, can't catch me in your net of words, but I do appreciate your efforts. Now I know why you slipped me a book of matches with a phone number that exists only in the movies. The brown room is that shade of brown called Catholic girl's school brown, rosary brown, chair outside the vice principal’s office brown, ruler slapped across the back of the hand brown. You have been bad, scaling the ancient walls around the convent yard, climbing the trees and swinging from the tallest branches. My hands will never tire of waiting to grasp your waist. My hands will always be there to catch you when you fall. But you never fall, do you? The metronome is the only true tone in the brown room. It ticks yes, it ticks no, it ticks yes, it ticks no.

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