for Anne Carson
on getting over it
There is a sort of change that is only observable in hindsight. We understand the transition not in itself, but as the thing that must have come between what we knew and what we see. We see leaves tossed and know, "wind". We see an empty smile and know, "loss". Looking around her apartment, spring light warming the floorboards chilled in the night's cold, I find it hard to remember just how I came to own this place on her worn leather couch, that toothbrush resting behind her sink. What I see is that when this sort of change develops, in that abstraction resting behind rib and lung, the body follows quickly and with closed eyes.
There is a sort of change that is only observable in hindsight. We understand the transition not in itself, but as the thing that must have come between what we knew and what we see. We see leaves tossed and know, "wind". We see an empty smile and know, "loss". Looking around her apartment, spring light warming the floorboards chilled in the night's cold, I find it hard to remember just how I came to own this place on her worn leather couch, that toothbrush resting behind her sink. What I see is that when this sort of change develops, in that abstraction resting behind rib and lung, the body follows quickly and with closed eyes.