It is wonderments lost cause: the lone wrestling with shadows, with the play of light on the edge of dreams and unwelcome consciousness, with the distraught song of far off sirens. We shuddered together. We bled the unknown salts of withheld words. I wouldn’t think of her if she weren’t near. I wouldn’t think of her if she were near. Today the sound of bells clashes against the cold like the light reflecting off the snow. Today the sound of the crowd holds the static and keeps time in the conversations where words just don’t do what they should. The looks of other people. The passing glances and wondering of who will think of you later, who will remember a word or a movement and wonder what you are doing now, you the stranger, you the conversationalist, you the interpreted.

When I think of Jude I wonder if she is singing to herself as she drives. I wonder if she is doing any number of things, each amazing in its own mundane way. At dinner M---- and JY asked how it is that deep loneliness is bearable. I had no answer. When I imagine the strangers I pass in their daily life I can only see the making of tea in a poorly lit kitchen, the stress of years as one sits at a butcher block counter and wonders the what ifs. The struggle to get from here to there without giving in to the cravings for another cup of coffee because that means talking to someone for a brief second, a transaction and interaction that holds so many possibilities that never develop. Everyone is particular and awkward, but we think of them as blasé, as tedious examples of that which we don’t want to be. But those we know live in a wonderful place. Even in making tea and pouring over a book of poems in my thoughts , Jude exists in a crystal chalice.