Two years ago I was in Connecticut in a used book shop. I found very small rare books published as a series of poetry. Red leather- bound, yellowing pages. They crack, those pages, and while this makes me sad if they didn't they wouldn't matter as much. I purchase a few. One of them, "Sonnets from the Portuguese", Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It seemed like the the sort of thing I would buy.
I came back home and I met you and I instantly figured that when you too would leave I would give them to you. I did the worst to you on some day. The other day, you said something to me and I burned for a very long time inside. I might have said something rude in response, but instead I smiled at you. I laughed. You must have burned inside every time I did. I do not care. You might have thought. I laugh at you. You might have thought. I was like that because I thought that They crack, those pages, and while this makes me sad if they didn't they wouldn't matter as much.
I did not give you the book. Two years later, I have a class and I'm writing an essay about the first poem from it. I have been in bed for three days and the sinking feeling returns, I watch videos about how everything in America will crumble. The audience in the videos laugh. My sounds echo and return to me from my room's walls. Where is the sun and the air that might have been as the home I last saw you in. Not yours though. It was thoroughly unlivable for you though sometimes you think Where is the sun and the air that might have been as the home you last saw me in. It is yours though.
On the moments I do step into the essay-- or rather, I step into the poem for the essay-- I hear her speak. And I would read about her husband. He wrote too. They loved for many years. When they lived, her words were far more loved than his. We send each other emails sometimes. You sometimes call me when you're drunk. You burn. My voice. When I call you through my laptop screen I stare at you. I burn. Your hair. What sun, what air. She says
"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death", I said. But there,
The silver answer rang ... "Not Death, but Love."
She says before she met him her life: