Member-only story
It stands open, translucent,
enacting a system of self-mirroring out of
deconstruction: the color of trees, the emotions
of houses, couples stepping out of isolation to apologize. Yes,
the figure in the branches is burnt black by the stars and
the structure of sex, ideation, and memory is
reproduced in the special, maternal todayness of
a hometown (or the frequently repeated
disjunction of love). Having become the person I wanted
to be only makes it more difficult to come
back a second time with the authority of joy.
I used to be able to prize apart the subtler sense of life from
uncomfortable dreams of lovelessness or aging,
but the freshness of human life is caught up in
the occupation of normal living. Real affection means raking
the snow flakes into the gutter for the city to pick up
or listening to the wind race through the windows
in the summer after midnight (as the body
gets tangled up into the heavy circuit of stars)
or throwing a baseball around for hours as
a way of retaining grace, or straining the moon
of fireflies and magic in order to retain only
its most clear, superior light.
Your piano lieder is simply life posited in absolute terms:
something my sister plays when she is in love or
when a single peal of bells nods the neighborhood off
to sleep. I look; I observe the phenomena: the tender
old blossom still clings to the clouds.
