"There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road." -J.N.

What an astonishing and ridiculous month April truly is. Oh Saturday, my Saturday! With your Kellerweis Hefeweizen and hummus on toast, and more projects/papers/exam preparation than a girl really knows what to do with, besides begin. Always beginning, it seems, since the endings aren't something it makes sense to talk about.  (Anymore.)

Ten momentous birthdays, one heartbroken anniversary, eight silly school assignments, and more than the year's worth of radiation and ambivalence later--all we have to show for it is a solemn afternoon with enough time to consider. The face on the screen with the smile that was. Frozen in place, before a now finite number of backdrops.

And a suitable poem....

Grief

Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.

Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor’s floor.

I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.

by Stephen Dobyns

...if only for the afternoon.

-L (4/30/11)