Like dew drops
      on a lotus leaf
      I vanish.
       - Senryu, died June 2, 1827

   The plastic venetian blinds cracked open to a V, as I pulled
   into the parking slot of Building 2-H, revealing the hand 
   of a light-haired Kayla behind its shadows.  The bolted front 
   door of the university apartment immediately swung open to 
   greet its visitor.  I walked into a room where he had loved
   her more than life, only a cold few hours ago.  On her bed, 
   in a calm struggle for order, lay a collection of neatly 
   pressed dresses and jackets - solids, prints, a subtle 
   houndstooth check; all on a variation of a theme: black.

   "I was angry, then I wasn't.  I was afraid, and then angry
   again.  And I'm trying not to be," she said as she rasped 
   at each nail with a cottonball soaked in non-acetone remover, 
   one frantic finger at a time.  "I'm not angry anymore.  I 
   find myself talking to him, and asking him what I should 
   wear to his funeral.  He wasn't happy here; he just wanted 
   me to go with him."

   She had been left on the floor of her one-room efficiency 
   for dead, almost every vessel in her neck bruised as she 
   fought with strength and with mind for life.  A beautiful 
   young Kayla, physically tattooed with contusions, emotionally
   tattooed in permanance by the anger of his soul.  A man whose 
   advice she now sought, in her own disoriented paradox, to 
   gracefully choose a simple goodbye dress and shoes.

   The raw sting of his poison suicidal drops had not yet fallen 
   to her face; the parasitical beads cling to the living lotus 
   leaves left behind, they cling to the faces of victims like 
   Kayla, who will feel their biting pain - long after the dew 
   drops have dried.




   
24 sept 98
23 aug 01
M Madison