Brackets

Grey Friday, eight degrees, the wind finding the loose end of every awning. The radio says Stockholm, says Carson, says the classical tradition, and moves on to traffic.

What I know of her is a habit. Where Sappho's papyrus had rotted or torn she did not finish the line. She set a bracket down and left the white after it.

] ]and the ]

Others had filled those gaps with roses, with longing, with what a woman on Lesbos must have meant. She let each gap be the size it was.

It is a kind of manners, I think, to say this much survived, and stop. The bus comes. Half its windows are fogged by the breath of strangers, and you read the street through the rest.