Changes

I'm back, after three days of attending a hugely intense seminar that I have yet to process through; I will write about it later when I have more perspective on it.

Right now I'm trying to manage several devastating pieces of information about Keith. The first is that he is not coming in December. They switched his R&R to April.

The second is that at some point in the next day or so, he will be going on a mission where he will not be able to call me at all and he is unable to even tell me how long that will be.

He called me last night at 2am and I was so exhausted that I could hardly comprehend what he was saying. His voice sounded so sad and distracted, I could hear voices in the background and then all of a sudden he had to go. Was that the last phone call before the mission? I don't know.

I can't even write about this. I can't write. But here is something I wrote before and expresses perfectly.


Dark rose leaves outside the window must
gleam faintly with the pale leavings of light
that slip the blinds; outside the cold rises like
mist off the grass and the roots of things begin
to curl in, already the lawn lies ornamented by
the pure yellow of several leaves of birch;
loosened early, they lie like estate jewelry on
the rough weave of grass and growing things.

Within my room, I lie at the heart of my recent
solitary confinement; my reality extends only as
far as the lamp lets me see, beyond the golden
cast is nothing but what used to be the rest of
the world, now made formless and void. I remember

you, but lightly. I catch you most clearly from
the corner of my eye; to lean too heavily on that
need would be to break those fast woven lines made
necessary by your compulsory departure.

I live in two worlds. One world is made of coffee
grounds, dog food and the door alarm; of work,
that world you never were party to and so
suffers the least from your leaving. I move
myself from one task to the next and time
moves with me, a reckless tease who withholds
and then upends his wares all at once and
the day ends in a blue spill quickly spreading,
of sorrow and the night. I give up pretending;
succumb to it. Your absence folds over me,
and I sleep, suffocating.

The other is interior, fed like flames by every
moment I can conjure of us, and no less real
for all that it is made up of the double image of
memory and invention.

It is this world I live in and I come out of it only
when forced, to stand, blinking, in the novel
reality of your absence and retreat, as soon
as possible, to my shadowy, lamp lit world, where,
if I do not look clearly, it is still possible that
even now, you lie beside me.