My Stockton students did some freewriting in class on Friday. As I was fretting away a freewrite with them, suddenly this phrase was set down as if by an unseen force, a fragment which has stood out from the rest of my scribbles; what I cannot/do not want yet to forget ––

I miss you
though you
are not mine
to miss
so I miss
the absence
of you, the
possibility

This spilled up from the subconscious somehow; like reflux, leaking backwards up the esophageal conduit, causing the heart to burn; waring away the already delicate lining; making it difficult/impossible to speak. It might not make for a very good start to a poem; it lacks specifics, specifically because details would be too telling; just a Xerox of something that wants not to be known or given a name. To name it would be a great betrayal of sympathy, and I want none of that now; or not yet anyway. Still, I’ve saved it here; I wonder why I have rescued it when I discarded the rest of my worries from Friday.

It was a great relief: to write down the rest and throw all of those anxieties into the rubbish bin for collection.

Except for this, that was not so easily abandoned over the weekend: you, who were not. (For I know what it is; of course I know.)

This is a rather sad & esoteric way to start the week, I will say. Here, Monday, isn’t it?

Well; let’s get on with it, then.