This book of life we authored together,
how unwieldy it has become!
How unviable, voluminous, clumsy,
we exclaim, agitate, complain,
as we turn pages, seek entries,
need notes to remember
how things were and came to be.
Early from work this evening,
I take it out on my own,
fingering through the dawn
and dusk of our days.
Pages we authored alone,
our versions of moments, people,
places that never tally, never obey
our scientific laws of objectivity.
Pages that still baffle, remain mystery.
Sentences authored by grace, hard-luck,
bowing to circumstances, to destiny,
and between them all,
pages and pages of expectations
we filed for one another. Legitimate,
thrust, impossible, obvious,
in longhand, shorthand, notes, letters,
and rare poems, startlingly beautiful.
Overcome, these pages I release
from the binding, from bondage,
from this holding servile
to one another, and set them free.
Tonight we shall make paper boats
and sail them on the sea of our stupidity
or kites, you will say, to fly upon
the unsealed horizons of possibility,
unexpected, unwritten, and
though blank, hardly empty.
- from Moon in My Teacup (2019)
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