Still B
My college roommate is a writer’s writer. She masters words. She takes sentences, wrestles them to the ground and then rips them apart. She carefully and lovingly pieces them back together, but never the way they were found. She reassembles them to make thoughts you didn’t know could be held together.
She wrote a poem about the people she loved once. We each had our own stanza. I found this poem on our third floor today.
B has hands & feet & a nose
that has freckles. B has an album & a camera
& 3 pairs of glasses. B has her own sink
& emergency potato chips. B has a possum &
a fire extinguisher & twigs from a dream.
B has a blanket she uses to cover herself
I remember reading it and resenting my vigilance. This B character was always planning and readying for what was to come. She was always preparing. She was constantly bracing herself just to get through it. Even plucking something from a dream.
Now I read about that B and long for her preparedness. That B was committed to seeing clearly. She could record all of her first impressions so she never forgot her gut. And she made quite the fire. That B would cover up and lie down next to it and know exactly when to put it out.
