She searched me carefully, as with a scene on is asked to memorize; that is, as if she might never see me again. 'Thank you for a pleasant walk, Asgar.'

'It was pleasant.'

'Yes.'

'I'm grateful you could come Alice.'

'It's been nice.'

Dull, ordinary words for people who want the moment to die. And perhaps, I did. It was too awful to think that I had preserved my heart so long ago and that now, years later, I had stuck it in my chest, smelling of formaldehyde, and found it too sorry and shriveled to work. But it's a common tale. Isn't there a statue, in Shakespeare, of a long-dead queen who comes to life before the eyes of her mourning king? The king rejoices and repents, but what does he do the next day? Does he remember how she sang off-key as she brushed her hair, how she screeched at servants?

Gaining weight and pulling my head out of the toilet was the most political act I have ever committed.

Life dries cold beneath the dead soul lights
When death sleeps, it dreams of you.

In reality, loneliness was more like a slow and constant drowning. I simply disappeared. The hall and classroom swallowed me up, and I became invisible, my quiet flailing unnoticed.

I think back on things that happened. I bet you think you can pinpoint where it started for her. It’s easy to think that, when you look back at something as a whole. But when you’re living it, day by day, it’s like you’re in the belly of something and you can’t see it’s whole shape from the inside.

No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true nature of poetry. The drive
to connect. The dream of a common language.