τρῆμα

Of whose nonfeasance this is the residue I decline to adjudicate, though I suppose one who wished the matter settled would have raised it while raising it could still have cost us something.

What remains is the subtraction of the tongue in which I could have been found wanting. Betrayal, in our bed, is a matter of upkeep.

Note how long a shape will hold once the substance has been quietly decanted out of it;

note that I flinch at the hand and hold the vigil, unmoored, sexless, entire;

note that my name will be legible on your stone and that neither of us, having read it, will be able to say what was done.

First the saying, then the intimation, then the negation of the intimation, until what remained of asking was a pure nescience, unfalsifiable and mild, and I became at last an apparition one may think to lean against without any risk of displacing.

Easier and lighter. More desirable in the loving,

as all things are that have foresworn requirement.

I say it; I say it and mean it; I say it, mean it—did you hear that the meaning is late to the party ? Addressed to nobody, in handwriting maybe resembling mine.

Between that mouth and mine exists a withholding, the merest closure of a valve, and by that motion he is real to someone and I am immaculate, offering perfect in its narrowness of admission.

Legs, mandibles, the eye’s reticulum, everything but the aptitude to want. Unspoiled, unspendable, faultlessly intact.

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy.

And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over and inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.

I have run my thumb along the joinery of my own tenderness and found it seamless. Not to be mistaken for the evidence of soundness, my love; the finest counterfeits are the ones that will not admit a fingernail.

Two sacs ; two flickers. Twice the technician drew the wand across the swell ; twice the screen returned unyielding twilight. Within the second of a sac a pulse marches its rhythm, faster, insistent, a bird’s heart worrying the membrane between us. ( Come back in a fortnight, she said. ) The single body that could not endure its singleness split along itself and where there had been one there were

Two, and the two were one flesh; one flesh, and the flesh was famished; famished, and the famine wore a face; a face, was yours; yours, was the mouth I closed around the syllables of your name.

Nothing is expelled; nothing is interred; nothing is mourned. The body is thrifty : it wastes nothing that it can eat.

FETUS PAPYRACEUS

The smaller sac is fattened against the membrane, thinned to the compass of a leaf, delivered at term; an appendix bound into the wrong volume. Fetus papyraceus, the twin made parchment. The twin made surface, made receiving material, made the very page upon which the survivor will spend a lifetime writing the word beloved and mistaking the pressure of the nib for an embrace.

( Of all the verbs medicine has conjugated over the dead, vanishing is the mildest, and therefore the most obscene. )

the   s tuck   t win   thins against

thewall shrink-wrapped ,   s till   w a vin g

The surplus plethora and the lack oligo, meaning : too little water for the one who was always drowning in yours.

(cleavage of the inner cell mass, day nine, day ten, day eleven, the late splits worst)

Thus was it with us : I did not lose you; confess rather I absorbed you, circulating in me ever since, lodged in the thyroid, seeded.

I, thickened by your subtraction, the only rite performed above

you.

You, the rite; the rite, a mouth; the mouth, mine; I, viable and singular; I, who went out into the world to look for you,

who have done anything for you. ㅤㅤㅤㅤ(anything) You would have done anything for me. ㅤㅤㅤㅤ(and did, and did not , and did)

Did I not merit your possession? Did I not merit the obsession that is possession's finer name ? Was I not your habitation, your resolve, your nerve made whole ? Did you love me sufficiently to remain in the world; and having remained,

did you love me sufficiently to look at me once, directly, without the betrayal of the averted face ?

May I be permitted to be one, now ? To be a body with a single pulse, unaccompanied, unhaunted, my blood answering to no second name?

Canㅤㅤ I be ㅤㅤㅤme ? ㅤㅤㅤㅤ( define the pronoun; take your time ;

we have the same liver )

Yet the vanished do not depart; assimilation is the most permanent form of company. In the wrist, in the tooth, breath before speech.

I will never be rid of you, and the physician's word is the only tenderness left to me :

Dispersed and go wandering, magnetized, insatiable (monochorionic, monoamniotic, one placenta, two petitioners, one supply) (in transfusion syndrome the shared vessels run one way; the recipient swells, the donor pales) and that such love is recognition rather than invention and that what is found again was never truly lost (nothing is returned to you; it is only that you have not finished digesting it) and that the flame, being one, cannot consume itself (it can; it is; it has; it did so in the dark before your face was made)

As requested: https://www.writersarchive.com/

The documents contain sensitive themes and topics (e.g., related to death).

Some notes are from my old files, which may include outdated information. Others were made in response to a request. I also included a few references that are still in my queue & drafts.

Choose which tips & notes are most appropriate for your own writing. Some are just quick references. Thus, more research may be needed for your written work.

Updates may be made in irregular intervals for added material and/or corrections.

All PDFs are free. You can pay what you want/can here. There's a very small fee to keep the site up. But please don't feel obligated to, especially if you're in a rough patch at the moment—been there (+ it is the holiday season after all, which I know can be a tough time). Writing has always been a safe space for me, so if these references help you as well, that would be more than enough for me.

Thank you to everyone who had been so encouraging about this little project.

Comb

c. 1900

by Bernhard Hertz