you burn me.
---Sappho.

Classes over, the term all but come to a close, just the fag end now.A tremendous sense of relief. Students' gazes buried away in their books, the library ticking over with thought, your hands cold and dry, but the lines more prominent now. A small tree, nameless, with its dark eleven o'clock shadow. There's something both beautiful and horrifying in the thought that it will survive us, that life goes on, somehow, miraculously.

Your mind has slowed down, is less restless. Always strayed too much, unlike your starred heart. Like an old person, you look forward to soup at 4 o'clock. You have no desire to talk to anyone. Just stay in your cell and read up on community. Yes, I know! Maybe some fragments that you'll hold, not shape, in the palm of your hands.

In the morning mist you walked past dark leaves, a few holding the memory of summer and brilliant blood-red.

You were late, as always. It passed you by. This sense of lateness, your defining characteristic, reflected in your eyes, part of your inheritance.You wait, patiently,for some kind of recovery, recollection and more. The winter mind, the winter heart, conserving,holding back, for the memory of the future, the day you remember me.

]
] nor
] desire
] but all at once
] blossom
] desire
] took delight