If One of Us Should Fall

Desolate

29 desOlate Des [traditional] name for the first born daughter + Sola [traditional] the curved heel on a black leather shoe specific to fado b. Kisi clan female name meaning, “She for whom time arrives stillborn” Des [obsolete] the first beat of desire. Quick blood. A thick vein of black oil flooding through Arctic frost, her voice. An apricot or ocean. Body past dark in fields of wet tobacco. Or “almost there, a path prepared.” One who makes turning a corner possible. Rain. Small pieces of light. La [rare] the abbreviated form of Lola (the woman in a song he often thought he saw reading magazines on trains dense with breathfogged windows and the wet wool of strangers; a woman to whom he found himself in close enough proximity to notice the spill of freckles galloping in unrecognizable patterns down her neck and wonder What galaxy is this? A woman with whom he would never have conversation, a woman, therefore, perfect, and permanently on her way elsewhere, him, hovering at the periphery, therefore, perfect in his loving, the heat from her neck, the dim lavender of her hair.) Late [origin unknown] spice indigenous to grasslands and temperate climes traditionally used to cure meats. Word meaning tasting of copper. Referring to specific systems and relationships of nuclear objects, e.g., the way his silk dress shirt hangs ironed in the closet. The star formation in which the board members invariably assemble around the mahogany table, the act of ignoring one empty chair, the deliberate, unchased bourbon, pork chops with mint jelly, the best friend and his heavy shoes headed homeward, the wife whose body is a paper birch canoe, famous for its hollowness, the eagerness with 30 which other people speak into her to hear the resonance of their own spoken name, the way she sat by the bedside as if at any moment he might rise from the dreams of bracken and slippery elm like before, hungry from his wandering, like before, his quick smile a ready indication that he was ready to go home. ...