Adrift/All is not lost
2 Minutes Read Time
He kept the things that were best. Things blue, and white, and the colors of skin in Caracas, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Cincinnati, San Francisco. He kept them poorly; he threw away the translucent box cover for the book on the body I’d given him, the one so dear I returned to the shop’s shelves my own selections.
Home to our Belvedere house just off Haight, to my office with the desk painted red, the bookshelves filled with spine after spine arranged by him. I entered the room after we’d moved and saw it like that: the red desk, the filled shelves. He’d done that for me, made the room that beautiful. I could not leave right away.
Tonight I searched the shelves of my San Jose life for the Great White. I could find only one with a black cover, a Scribner’s edition belonging to my husband.
But he was my husband once, my Great Brown man with the silver pedigree. He took the blue-bound sea with him, the cover in tatters, the notes of others before me in the book, my notes in the margins, margins being the only place he left room.
He took the notes with him, and The Beatles’ Great White Album, the one first belonging to my brother Jonn, then to me. He made sure to be gone from the house when I came looking for the last things. I keep my eyes on the sea.
Read more from Issue 15.1.
