What Ships

*The filed entries, an address behind glass*

Entry one hundred and nine. For you: the jar I fired on the coldest Tuesday of the year. It came out of the kiln the colour of a hand held up to a window. Strike the lip, and it holds one note. I tuned it to the pitch of your name in my mouth, which I never say out loud. It sits in the north light, saying it.

Entry one hundred and ten. For you: the thread I wound on a cream card, four winters of it. The path is the record: over, under, back, and where the colour changed, the card says nothing, which is where you were kindest. I keep the card facing the door you'd use, if you used doors.

Entry one hundred and twelve. For you: a fold of paper, folded to the width of your hand, then folded once again, the way fields go into envelopes when the rain wants them sent. It is blank. I have written on it, and struck it. The writing was the rehearsing. The blank is the arrival.

~~Entry one hundred and thirteen. For you: the apology.~~ Withdrawn. Some letters are load-bearing.

Entry one hundred and twenty. For you: the corn I ground to a flour, to draw on the floor a shape for you to arrive in. It lasted the length of one morning's damp. I drew it anyway. I drew it because it lasted the length of one morning's damp.

Entry one hundred and twenty-one. For you: nothing new. I re-read the entries. The re-reading is a way of touching that cannot be refused.

Tonight I pack one file. One. The jar. Newspaper, string, my hand twice on the label. The rest stay filed, and facing you, and kept. The glass keeps your side clean of my want. Whatever arrives, arrives handled. The parcel does not carry it. The carrying was mine.