Interlude (53)

(Afterword)

Does this story know how to walk into the sunset, arm around the waist of hope? Does it know when to stop, to let the past become the future, let the future rechristen the past, let time recalibrate itself around words — words written now, words written then, words that make no sound? Where the last part of the story stops, more has already happened. Before. ‘On Turning Fifty’ was a milestone-chapbook I released in 2019. Then from the quiet of the year that followed, came ‘The Night is my mirror’. The continuity surprises me, though much of it was inevitable. There was more. From the horror of the pandemic years came the anguished poetry in ‘Duplicity‘, released in 2021. All the dots are connected now. Do you see the pattern? Do you remember the crow that became a line in the sky? The first line. Do you see what geometry that line has wreaked? How solemn are those polygons? Which side is up? Some of those edges follow the horizon, some of them touch the acute angles of one blinking star in the sky.

Part 61.1

(the end that isn’t)

How far has this crow travelled? What is the
measure of a broken story? The crow that
became a line in the sky, pauses like a comma

on a branch of the gulmohar tree. What remains
to be said, must wait. For another time. For
another sky. For another crow. Forever. For not

everything must conclude in glory. Not everything
must conclude. Some things can only go so far.
Like an ordinary story with no beginning and no

end. The crow sighs at the retreating dusk,
swallowing its caw, swallowing twilight,
watching through that window, the woman at

her desk, not writing. How far has this woman
travelled? How ordinary is an ordinary story?
How ordinary is an ordinary woman? The

crow can’t tell if she is smiling. An ordinary day
births another ordinary night. If there is a moon
now, neither woman nor crow can see it.