Not
for Her
Amelia
Present
Second Person/Amelia
Amelia/Without
Absent
Amelia
Amelia
home
|
|
Before, when the world
was different, before she was everyone’s.
I did not think to look up in the sky for her,
she was there, the skies were filled with her and I knew her.
This is what it is to know someone so well that you are not even aware
of her presence.
And then she was everywhere,
could hardly open a newspaper or turn on the radio but there she was,
to say nothing of looking up in the skies and catching sight of her.
Gradually I came to know her and was aware of myself (I thought of her
as mine);
flying, I would perhaps fly with her.
I tried to imagine what it was like for her, cramped in her quarters,
seeing things away from this place;
could she be warm as I was warm, how did the wind feel howling in through
the metal?
We were different in this way; over the years we grew closer.
By map I charted the course of her circumnavigation,
by radio I followed her progress, listened for her voice.
and then she stopped speaking
and then her voice stopped
and then her voice went dead
and then the radio went dead.
Was this trouble at my end or hers, at first I could not be sure,
I banged the side of the thing, there was only static and noise.
But no it was at her end. she was not there. there were no sounds out
there.
And then clearly she was not responding (I think I knew already that she
was gone),
and there was nothing to do but search and I searched (I sensed always
that she was just beyond my field of vision),
and there was nothing to do but hope and I hoped, until I could not.
They never did pinpoint the time of her disappearance or the place (there
is comfort in this for me, though you wouldn’t think it),
and there was no precise moment, for me at which she exited (gradually
she disappeared),
and there was no precise moment, for me at which she ceased to be.
|