“Agony is only a story I tell myself.” – seon joon
Be still I tell my heart when it startles almost out of its dress or when it jumps at the sound of thunder—
Be still for that loud report like a gun from an upstairs bedroom is only a heavy framed mirror falling from its flimsy wall hook and breaking on the floor—
Be still for that commotion in the schoolyard is an old-fashioned chase for no other reason but that school is out, not a fight being broken up by cops—
Be still as the little plane stuffed with travelers’ belongings idles on the icy tarmac as bits of frost flower at the window’s edge and the captain’s voice comes over the speakers announcing a third, maybe not final, delay—
Be still as the small machines blink to life on the night table with a message from halfway or more around the world, which can only mean either very good news or very bad news—
Be still in the middle of the airport terminal, Concourse C, ticketing, though your eyes are puffy with tears from hugging a friend you have not seen in 22 years and you know your flight to Boston is the last one out for the day because of a winter storm, but it doesn’t matter now because she is telling you that during her last visit to your hometown, she had a crypt made for her use “in the near future,” next to the one holding the ashes of her son—
Be still, be still, because this is merely another veil like the unseasonal snow falling softly outside, stenciling the trees whose branches were just beginning to send out little buds of green, beautiful points of ice shriveling the pink tissue of early crepe myrtles—
And be still when you recognize a famous poet in the crowded elevator, and you note the frailness of her bones through the unnatural pallor of her skin, and how when the doors open on her floor she sighs to her husband, I don’t know what I want to do—
In response to thus: Each thing called up dissolves.
