by Keetje Kuipers
To explain, to chart, to graph
what has lasted this long and what hasn’t.
To take the temperature, not with the back
of the hand but with a thermometer. One hundred
thermometers. One thousand.
To correlate, categorize. To count
stacks into stacks. To assign significance
—to a woman, a bed, toast spread with jam.
We make meaning faster than we can understand it:
Listen to the body only
long enough to ignore what it says. Discard
each explanation we uncover.
But in resorting to words—
But if it becomes a story—
Seven years without her was a glacier,
a delicacy, an unquantifiable
quantity.
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