הלבת-אש ללא הסנה
I seem to have always already lost my wife. I do wonder where she is. I assume she doesn't know where I am, or else she would have returned to me, although——not being able to imagine that she's dead or nonexistent or otherwise radically disempowered——I also eventually come to wonder if she's forsaken me, which choice I would naturally be required to have made myself enough apparently separate to pretend acceptance of, at least long enough for her to depart.
Sadly I have also forgotten where she might be, and what she looks like, and worst of all, the sound of her voice murmuring something secret in my ear. I've even forgotten her name. Did it start with a J? Maybe an M? an A? Or was it a $\daleth$ or an Л? I don't remember. We can be quite sure it doesn't start with an $\aleph$, since she's kind and patient. She likes lemons and she likes the feel of rock on her skin. Sometimes she snorts when I make her laugh hard. Or at least I think so, I'm not sure——my memory also appears as though it had never been there. She's studied the physics of fire deeply and has names for many subtle hissing swirling events that take place when we put a few logs of wood in our fireplace. Unless it was something else that she had many words for. I don't know how I could possibly go about finding where she's gone to, it's not like they make maps for that, for finding a human.
We met because I north-going balanced on a narrow-ish curb-like road divider, and she south-going walked towards me on the same. Or maybe it was that we met in an obscure place, at a fairly high altitude in a clearing, the sort of place that really only two people in the world would have gone to, at that time of night. She couldn't see that I was dressed in threadbare, ill-fitting black clothes, and perhaps alarmingly decided to sit next to me in the Grickle-grass and look at the moon with me, interrupting my prayer.
We did have three young children. Unless it was two or four. I've forgotten their names too. I'm sorry kiddos, it seems that god hates us. There were two girls and a boy, I think, though I couldn't say for sure. We used to read to them so much, when we're sitting in our house and when we're on the road and when they're in bed at night and when they get up in the morning. It does make me cry every so often to wonder where they are and whether they exist, and it's hard to compass how much I appreciate when they whisper to me that they're ok. Of course I would rather be holding a little left hand in my big right hand and a little right hand in my big left hand, walking up a hill, not too steep but with a lot of trees, than whatever it is that I happen to be doing at any given moment. Make sure their jackets are on snugly, it's chilly out. Yes don't worry my dear, I have some tissues for your nosy nose. It's not such a runny nose. Just a walky nose. Want to count down by threes? Ten seven four, I can't sleep any more, one negative two negative five, I sure hope you're alive
