The Complete Stories

Notes on the Mystery

Younger, I could go to my friend
when her heart had been pierced

and she was gasping for breath,
and I could tell her, nothing is lost

entirely, all experience
in time becomes a window.

She was twisting the wheel
of a wooden toy. I’d said more

than I believed.
Two blocks down, fine pins

of ice slurred the brackish water, slowed
the small waves, until on a last

heave, one
froze, a sheer shell

in the dark between the reeds.
When I search

my journals for her,
who melted from my life,

I’m searching for you, and for this
special faithlessness, I apologize;

there are so few people
in those soft covers, so many

descriptions of our four rooms—how they remain
the same, tall and old, quietly beautiful,

and yet change utterly as the sunlight
fills and abandons them on a clear afternoon.

Today was cooler. A high film of cloud
calmed me; a letter and an offer came.

Though I was tired, I brushed varnish on the floors,
let it thicken, then buffed it until it glowed

with cloths cut from a green flannel shirt
my father sometimes wore.