Quote by Mary Szybist

“Approaching Elegy It's hard to believe you are dying: like looking at a Jamesian scene, skipping past happiness to a garden bench beyond the trees. You fill the form of heroine: you sit in your black dress, too tired to imagine the rest of yourself. An old suitor appears, grabs you possibly too forcefully by the wrists (he is still impossibly in love—). You disengage your wrists. He leans forward, looks into your eyes, which you close—as if you were all by yourself. He moves closer, talking very fast about happiness. He places his cloak on your shoulders, imagines he'll rescue you. Around you, forms grow darker: house, branch, hydrangea. Above you, freckled expanses of leaves form the beginnings of barbed, lopsided shrouds—a possible solace. If only his kiss could please you, I wouldn't need to imagine past the clean architecture of the story. And perhaps it is wrong to look past that. Wrong to ask about happiness. Past midnight, he continues to offer himself. Before, he had offered aimless passion, but now (you see it for yourself) he has an idea: he points into the darkness. He is grave, formal. The dark has swallowed the long shadows of the oaks (though not your unhappiness) —and it is about to swallow you. Soon, it will no longer be possible (there is just one more page to turn) for me to look through your eyes, so I would like to imagine for you: something past tragedy. Just as I would like to imagine that we are not in danger, that we have selves more solid than stars, that we are safe in the pages of books we can reopen to look at each other. Except that we are not women formed of words, but of impossible longings. What was it that you wanted besides happiness? You are dying. I have no ideas about happiness and no patience to imagine it possible. Soon you will not be the heroine; you will not be yourself. And it's not that you've lost the formula; your form is losing you. Look at how brave you are: I imagined the great point was to be happy, as happy as possible with the quick forms that imagine us—but the last time I looked there you were—distant and bright in the not so blue darkness, imagining yourself.”

Quote by Mary Szybist