The first time I proposed to her we were in a car
and I did not know that she had just drifted from our conversation into sleep.
Two days later I arranged for her to receive a copy of “Lolita”.
I knew if she was to be in my life, she would need things to make her happy.
I gave her a new book to read each time a month arrived.
I hoped to delay her departure, and there was slight success,
but for no longer. She has flown.
She sometimes returns, usually when I am gone securing the next week’s wages:
She pairs my socks, hangs my laundry in the closet, washes the dishes
piled high in the sink, and smoothes the blankets on the bed I studiously avoid.
She wants to come back to my arms, to curl her fingers within mine,
but if I asked her to do this she would seek one ocean or the other.
That she should mirror a kind, sad woman from Bukowski’s poems
is difficult to believe under any circumstances.
Combined with knowledge of the current situation it is absurd.
It is enough of a strain that the tragedy of Hamlet should contain the tragedy of Hamlet
played out onstage. When a man reads the tragedy and imitates the prince
in his own life, he commits to this course knowing that one afternoon
he shall encounter a group of actors who have prefigured the day of his death.
That living plagiarisms of Shakespeare should exist is not surprising,
but that they should intertwine with the lives of those who imitate
the lovers of drunken factory workers is an utterly curious thing.
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