SOPHIE’S ANSWER

To write builds a dead world to mirror

what is familiar is likewhys what

you may habituate to

the world you made of a view

you think you own the

world but only the

familiar,

self made problematic. Call it so and

it answers. I call you

Joshua. You answer as

I. I am an I too, apparently

to you I am Stephanie, but you

don’t call. There’s no why

to know. Knowing there’s no why

there’s only the world familiar to you

without me. The understanding in asking why

is you know there will not be answer

because there isn’t one already.

This is the reason behind why

your 4 year old harasses you

with why, she knows

you could kill your world with it. Too, she knows

why is because, and it’s not

because you said so. Everything is because it is

everything is all because why

this fit of hers appears childish to you because you think

she is. Without asking, she’s cooperative

with wonder. In essence, she’s it.

You say she is Sophie.

Say it, Sophie. Sophie. See here, look. You’re Sophie. I’m Daddy.

I’m Daddy.

No, you’re Sophie.

I’m Sophie.

Yes, good girl.

Sophie is a good girl.

Yes, you are.

You are.

No, I’m a boy.

You’re a bad boy!

Sophie, no.

No!

No, Sophie.

No no no NO!

She runs until she knows she’s out of the range of his game*. She doesn’t take Sophie.

Her father sees Sophie run

in his head. That’s where Sophie is. The nameless does not fit in the world

of the named. The 4 year old body runs through the house

perceiving as much of the nameless

she can

before the nameless is separated, as she will be into things, many things, all of them, too many to name. So many that Sophie will forget some she’s supposed to know

as a good girl who answers as if she is certain

she is Sophie. She may die trying to be this good girl named Sophie. Other Sophie’s have.

*The force of his insistence builds walls around a form that’s supposed to be her, and this form feels them contract. Too, she feels her sense of the Self contract and reflexively flees.

There’s no feeling in an answer, maybe behind, maybe in front, between the words, the space between thoughts, before an answer, you feel the feeling you have it. You think the feeling you hold on to it. You love the feeling so much, you give it all your attention, but the feeling does not have arms, either to hold your attention or defend itself with. So it goes. I felt it. I had it. It went through me. I put everything in it. I put it up this nose and smell my hands, on that feeling. I wear it like glasses I wear it out. It doesn’t break or crumble like old cake, it is gone as if it never was. As if it never was, it wasn’t. If it were, where was it again? It flushed my face. I had a handle on it then my hands tingled like charged. I felt a renewed sense of purpose, I touched your face, wanting to connect you with the feeling. I had you both close, the most was possible. I should have cut off my hand and given it to my other hand. I described it to you, your curiosity, your demand, has a habit of deadening wonder, its sense, its nonsense, your nerve, what nerve, my nerve cells, condemned to inhabit me, they can’t be trusted, unfree, but I was, I will to, take moments back for myself with your very tool, I evoke what I felt, but I feel the familiar, immediately, this immediacy collapses under the weight of my past here, passed, but I’ve made a work of its narration that will never be finished, not even when I die, as I cannot write “the end” when I’m dead and if I could, I’ve been unable to write every thing accurately as it has come, a fool’s gold of a life. I feel the discrepancies as guilt. I have not bothered with how I got here, how I got from A to B is difficult enough to write, though now it seems so easy, the residue of my want, red handed pen holding it will not run but out of ink. The scenes anticipated to direct, a fly frozen in the ice cube of my bourbon, the water left over undrinkable in its tastelessness, the memory of its previous forms palpable to my tonguing.