I dreamt last night. You came into the room, wearing your purple checked shirt. It was you, all bent over and smiling and pleasant, just as you always were. We chatted and went somewhere and you adjusted your glasses as you always do.
I feel the fabric of that cotton shirt, the buttons and the fold in the collar; the slight fraying along the wrist.
I heard that death is a terrible thing and no one should have to go through it. But of course…of course, well…and therein lies the tension.
I was not to have had that experience and here I find myself; smoothing and folding the checked material of purple cotton in the early days of March; listening to the honking of a lone goose outside the window; hearing the tapping of a distant shovel on a snow laden driveway…
690 Saint Paul 