« In Which We Remember You From A Bygone Era »

The Five Questions

by LINDA EDDINGS

for Adam Cave

Reported but not observed, belt buckles contain pressure that — once loosened — behaves as a refraction of light. Above that, jury-rigged consecrated cathedral of always. I make the conversation linger, but what's resolved in a strike of tugboats five star hotel room windowless blinds?

Penance less than death is expectant surprise, like "unusual to see you here." The cold commands ask little and I am always trying to say what I belong to. Once shelter was all kicking off the shawl to keep dry. Now it rains harder than it must.

Berries planted upside skip the hills and cut-out pigeons, policy-holders, urgent wheat in the deep end of the pool. Atop the sun shine leggings and motorbikes waiting for hypnosis and the tendrils sweep the high grass where the robins bicker gently as if asking a name.

He writes, "There is no mind better > than the one I have > to pull space around > for the warmth of quiet > nothingness stuck on a pin. > It is what I see when > I have stopped > resembling myself."

The devil panics when he sees the beginning of a crosswalk.

I am dreaming, drowning. All that middle-aged love. Pillow up the bed and under, glimpsing without eyes or place to evince the resulting dilemma. Grief-stricken or opaque, I asked you to put it away the day before yesterday. What does that make today?

Surely you saw the last bit of him go. Certainly there was music, definitely there remains a chorus, in the place of kings.

You see, he died so I could sleep, men were at my window. A star fell from the earth to land on the sky. The pitter-patter lasts until expired, like milk. Vast reverie, as in never coming up for air, or wiping my nose. He is in a hole when I am not. Then announcements: the citadel of December, embossed in red leather. Whether just arriving or leaving finally, where water leads into other water. Enough to ford the tide, graduate. Pages overcome, avalanched on my new bed. Spring was always the wrong season, smiles were too seductive or not enough. My mother, my father in the navy. She watched us go. I came the whole way, all of it, spilling out. Just for this?

I fear being beholden, so bend to choose among the fleet. The unmoving man gestures at the head of a pin and is untouched by choice. Beset on all sides by stone, I stir to collect and shatter on the waves.

Linda Eddings is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Images by Tenesh Webber.