untitled

this is the first day in 10 days where i've not cried. that's not to say i won't get weepy later. i've been reading poetry today and of course i have come across poems that i think are fitting to what has been going on.

A Reminiscence
by Anne Brontë

YES, thou art gone! and never more
Thy sunny smile shall gladden me;
But I may pass the old church door,
And pace the floor that covers thee.

May stand upon the cold, damp stone,
And think that, frozen, lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,
The kindest I shall ever know.

Yet, though I cannot see thee more,
'Tis still a comfort to have seen;
And though thy transient life is o'er,
'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been;

To think a soul so near divine,
Within a form so angel fair,
United to a heart like thine,
Has gladdened once our humble sphere.

The Answering Machine
by Linda Pastan

I call and hear your voice
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.

Shall I leave one, telling
how the fabric of our lives
has been ripped before
but that this sudden tear will not
be mended soon or easily?

In your emptying house, others
roll up rugs, pack books,
drink coffee at your antique table,
and listen to messages left
on a machine haunted

by the timbre of your voice,
more palpable than photographs
or fingerprints. On this first day
of this first fall without you,
ashamed and resisting

but compelled, I dial again
the number I know by heart,
thankful in a diminished world

---------------
i keep making attempts at writing something to get all this from my head onto paper, but i'm not quite there yet. and when i do get there, i'll write it with a fountain pen, b/c bram felt he could only write with a fountain pen.
for the accidental mercy of machines,
then listen and hang up.