Helen Peterson

Finis

Eight years is a long time to go without writing a happy poem, but there it is, piles and piles of red leather bound journals spilling from the couch, lines drawn, faded dates, angst, misery, but no joy. You wonder why she stays, if she’s been so unhappy, if nothing has ever been good enough to write down. Pulling down the bookshelves of your own mind, you recall quiet nights together, quoting the funny lyrics you were trying to memorize from a new show as she scribbled in those books, reading each piece aloud to see if you ‘got’ it. The easy grace of her legs stretched on the couch, even now after the rest of her has gone to fat, pencil gripped firmly in her teeth as she muddles through another sonnet about dead dogs and wretched childhoods.

“Paper has a memory,” she’d scold as you dog-eared another script, “someone else has to read that after you.” It always used to melt you, the tenderness she felt for the written word. But now you wonder if it was just her way of turning the page.