September 29, 2026

how it works

First, Julia has to call to say she’s at the bakery downtown with a student,
Yusef, who has a poem he’d like to get some feedback on. You have to be
in the middle of something when the phone rings. A math problem, or
grief, or contemplating what there is in the fridge for lunch. Then Julia
will send the poem over text, a poem that begins with the line, “People
don’t understand…” and includes the words “lost” and “bleak” and then,
quite by surprise, “illuminate” and “peace.” You’ll talk with the kid
about why the phrase “I think” would best be left out. “Don’t be afraid,”
you’ll tell him, “to say it as if it were true.” When you ask Yusef to name
the feeling in the poem, his voice will sound the way moss under those trees
at the gardens at the outskirts of Acadia felt on your fingertips, the gardens
where a year ago your friends gathered as a septet and named yourselves
Dahlias. You couldn’t have known then it would be the last time you’d spend
like that, frolicking through rows of blooms, passing your palms over
the forest floor. ”Hopeful,” Yusef will say, bringing you back to the poem,
which—given the ending, you’ll tell him—would be considered an ode.
Then Julia will come back on and say, “Maybe that’s the title.”
And in your quiet room, looking out into the grey afternoon—the same grey
that for Yusef, as he writes, turns the sky into a blank sheet of paper—
you’ll think of Liz, gone exactly one week—and put your own hands
on the keyboard to find your way forward.