I have a hard time within those moments when things seem so obstinately real -- like a covert hiccup stealing what you wished was so, from the vulnerable open palm of how it is -- never leaving you with even the charitable gift of potentially requited hope. Left standing on the rocky shore I feel foolish looking for boats on the horizon, and like a dancer who never learned her steps, I wait for the music to move me.

I often watch him fold the newspaper for over an hour. Sections placed within sections, ordered up and over again, until the rustle of other's memories become a din of purposefulness -- a metaphysical melody for the inner order he can't control.

Hidden like the chalice within an edition from December, he uncovered the lost "business" file. Placed strategically between all the folding and hiding, he had treasured this bundle of ink and prose. I watched his beautiful grey-green eyes look copiously upon the Kennebec's worn pages. Retrieved in June from beneath his mattress, this paper held the answer to the question no one knew.

"Will you check this report for me...? I want to make sure everything is order. I don't want the management to think otherwise."

I held the worn pages in my hands as if its folds and creases would untie and yet unite the question in his eyes. I tried my best, at my behest, to profess to pretend.

"I think everything is in order. I am sure he will be pleased." I gazed at the pedantic, newsless headlines and imagined a million endings rather than this. I tried to envision this mythical file that bled through the reality of the ink soaked newsprint... this file that placed things in order... that made sense out of senselessness, purpose out of purposefulness. What was it about? Who was it for? My mind stuttered on the beauty -- the ability of the human mind to create intention within confusion. Like a thirsty man in the desert, this newspaper became a mirage; a visible and tangible illusion that contained all the yearnings and desires tangled up within a conflicted mind.

I placed the file down to be "mailed."

I have the hardest time realizing I never said goodbye -- I waited on the parts thinking somehow they would regenerate the whole. I am still wishing on a smile, a gesture, a word. I wish things had been different. But how do you give release to the tide that you can't see... when it is only evident by the things it washes away?

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