Was it your darkest
night or one of those mornings,
your window glowing,
birds chirping, you chose
death over the horror and
stopped eating? I just
read the good philo-
sopher, how your choice and my
horror at it af-
firm the ‘simple, el-
emental good’ of being.
You knew the horror.
The scrambled eggs I
made for you grew cold on the
tray. You closed your eyes.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Author: Tom D'Evelyn
Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Portland OR and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites.
View all posts by Tom D'Evelyn
Clicking ‘like’ is woefully inadequate. I was really looking around for an ‘admire’ button, Tom: brave lines, and beautifully judged as ever. —John
LikeLike
And I hope the final image delivers the shock — almost funny — of the absurd!
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is that absurd moment when your loved one stops eating, stops drinking, stops being there with you . You hang there, in space, in your love for that one, human or animal, and you are in the horror. Maybe you never leave, maybe you do, but the horror of that moment never leaves. Love is so profound that we cannot conceive its being cut off. I don’t get anything funny, but I’m sitting at the curb of life, mourning all those I’ve lost. I can understand why one turns away from the scrambled eggs.
LikeLike
Exactly.
LikeLike