January 12th, 2014


did you know that they can make a diamond out of your body after you die?
someone says. No. I did not know this and it strikes me as remarkable, as in,
I would like to mark it in my mind and then mark it again in writing, and so
I do. In our insurance papers pregnancy is considered an illness, someone else
says. I also did not know this. Earlier when I walked to Tisane to meet Maura
the air was warm and mist rose from the snow. The trees shook, nervously or
excitedly, over the sidewalk and the orange streetlights swelled in the haze.
I made jokes to myself as I walked that I can't remember now, and I narrated too
much saying things like "she was a storm walker because she liked to walk
through storms rather than avoid them", only when he called today and I froze
and stared at the phone in something I would have to describe as fear, I realized
my narrations had been lies. It's been this way since you. What did happen to that
half-finished ring? I didn't want it but I didn't not want it. I wanted time. The sidewalks
in the rain last night did not look like diamonds but like cellophane, and that has its uses too.