principal trait de mon caractère:
desire to see the back
side of things since
the back is the only part
of our body that we can
barely see or touch,
to taste the difference
between Burgundy wines
grown au-dessus or au-dessous. Even
in the Scuola Grande di
San Rocco in Venice, we walked
holding mirrors
in order to better see
Tintoretto’s paintings
on the ceiling. Think of how
the trunk of the paperbark
maple bursts into flames
when the sun sneaks up
behind it. Tall stones are known
as menhir in Welsh, hir
meaning long as in
hiraeth, nostalgia or longing
for home. But the backside
of nostalgia—nostos, return,
and the desire to return—
also bears algos, pain, the im-
possibility of returning. When I was
a child, I wanted to find a way
to take the blue-, pink-, and
yellow-dyed rabbits’ feet
hanging from belt loops or rear-view
mirrors and give them back
to the hopping rabbits.
And I loved the Biblical story
of the many loves
of bread, although in hindsight
I see they must have been
loaves. Remember the moment
in Le grand blond avec une chaussure
noire when Mireille Darc
greets her paramour at midnight
in a high-necked silk, black
velvet dress and then pivots
to walk away, revealing
that the dress has
no back? The moon, too,
sometimes goes black
just before slipping out
of its eclipse. In front of
the homestead where my
family lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
beyond trees and thickets,
an occasional upright
stone, a row of jonquils
blooms each spring. Sometimes
we cut them early and
arrange them in a vase: you love
to count the hours it takes
them to open. Now, at this
moment, when everything is
still possible, I remember you
as you will be.
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