Mornings

When the sun is not yet up and the child is already crying, when you wish you had gone to bed earlier instead of holding on to that book, when you have to turn off your insistent alarm clock for the fourth time, when you want to go back to that lovely dream where the guy in your calculus class said hi. You just stay there, your head heavy with thoughts.

The Age of Innocence, Chapter 22

He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.

Edtih Wharton, The Age of Innocence

This is lovely, I had written in the margin. Newland's marriage to May does not turn away his love for Ellen. Instead it is intensified--the world without Ellen is "empty" to Newland, and only if he could just see the patch of dirt Ellen's feet have pressed, that is enough to make him whole. 

When her glasses are thoughtfully placed next to your journal, what do you assume? That she must have read your journal, of course.

It's funny how our minds think. Because we often think first of the what and not of the what if and what else.

An addendum

There is no one in the library now
besides you and me;
The librarian is too old to hear us
anyway

Song in half an hour

When there is no one else in the library
except the old librarian who doesn't listen anymore
I would like to ask you,
"Did I love you?"
But with your heavy books
on top of mine I cannot say
anything
except maybe ask you the time.
And then maybe you or I would
take those heavy books,
shove them into our already heavy backpacks
and leave.

What I want to ask you is to
stay.
Don't come and don't
leave.
Please
erase away this note, this beat, this
song, so I won't have to sing again.

But you're not supposed to talk
in the library, and there are people who always listen
so I cannot ask you to stay.
So you and I come back and back
into the heaviness, the bookishness
we go--to forgo time,
for I cannot forgo
you.

What I want to ask you is to
stay.
Don't come and don't
leave.
Please
erase away this word, this voice, this
song, so I won't have to sing again.

So did I love
you?
Well, I must have
because I'm still singing
and you haven't yet erased
me.