After you

Once upon a time, in a land where archetypes dwell…
I knew
Fingers tighten on the notion of a pen with a nib like a barb that snags aching flesh to bleed onto paper.
I knew a woman
Once upon a time a story’s sharp, pristine acid is immutable, the barest etch an exhalation of a truth to be found and a truth in the finding.
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones
“Writing things down doesn’t make them true though.”
And yet…
And yet.
I knew a woman I knew a woman I—
I strain to hear into the silence. The subtext is there, waiting to be parsed.
(I’m martyr to a motion not my own…)*













*poem by Theodore Roethke