The Maynard
Spring 2018

Hinges

                                   Let’s talk about Walter. All that’s left of him is the idea of a flower, dry, flattened, between pages 35 and 36 of some book in my library. Dead, if we say things for what they are. Forgotten, or at least the path to his death because I don’t know the title of the book he lies in. Has he become a character already? Have I? And that flower, as nameless as the book, smells of a 17^th-century manuscript with embedded pieces of plants, lint, a petal or two, and traces of ago. A recipe for texture. And Walter has still not emerged—not in the 17^th century and not in this one. Maybe if I decide to say his name like my grandparents would have said it, maybe, he’d be tied to others that are with me every day even if no longer alive. But Walter refuses to wander too far away from my mouth. He settles for the tip of my tongue, the place to hold what we cannot let go of. He stays close, inside.