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Ambrosia Froid looked out her office window as the sun
dipped under the trees. It was late in November, so late that she had to remind
herself to not stare at her neighbor’s fluorescent Christmas lights and burn her
eyes. He was old and colorblind, so he did not know any better, but the lights
still did little to give him pity. Froid had always walked past his apartment
and cringed at the bright purple. It clashed with everything. She would always
somehow forget.
The
English Department office was empty now. She was the last to leave. She had no
need to stay so late: she had interns that could do the busy work for her, or
editors to boss around, but she never did. She had the equivalent of four
Quentin the publishers around her every workday, making sure her lecture for
her class was going okay, collecting her poetry to compile into volumes, bring
her Americanos, bring her nicotine patches.
This
was the life of Ambrosia Froid: junior lecturer at the University of Washington,
poet laureate of the state of Washington, hallowed alumna of the gracious
university. Her living was nice: she was paid to do what she would do for free.
She traveled to colleges to give readings, wrote on commission, ate at Asian
Fusion restaurants with other famous poets, and best of all, had the enviable
position of calling some student’s earnest attempt “flowery at its worst.” She
was even more cynical now. She could thank poetry for that. However, she still
needed it.
As
she entered her sparse apartment, she remembered the date: six years since
Samuel’s disappearance. She had not even thought about it the last five. Once
everyone assumed she was dead she refused to revive her hope. She had no idea
where he went, but it was clear to her: she would never see him again.
She
held “hIre why’sdumb” up to the light. She did not ever take it out of the
plastic bag. It was too precious to touch. It was not too precious to listen to
though. She recited it every night. She had had it engrained into her mind for
years.
Next
to it she had put her old copy of the first volume of y(not)ou. Samuel had published three in his lifetime and two had
been published posthumously through Murkvein, but Froid never bought another
copy. “hIre why’sdumb” was published in the beginning of the third and most
acclaimed of the three. She refused to buy it in the wake of her breakup with
Samuel, and while she was dating him, the second volume was published. She had
no need to by the poetry of the poet when she was dating poet and could watch
every one of them surge out of his mind and onto charcoal.
Froid
sighed and opened up the volume. She could not read it at all; it was destroyed
when she made the poem “still you.” She had not forgotten the poem, but she had
forgotten which words she had removed from where.
Then
she had an idea. In celebration of Samuel’s life, transcribe the volume, using
the process of elimination to determine which words went where. It was arduous
and time-consuming, but Froid had no desire to grade mediocre poetry. She would
be just like Samuel: return it to the students blank.
The
first poem in the volume was called “wetrock.” She rewrote the poem,
reinserting the words “shore” and
“blue.” The next poem was “man.Ia.trieval,” which was missing some prepositions
and the word “split.” The third poem was her personal favorite, a simple poem
called “gash:us.” She remembered which words went where because she had
memorized it long ago: “lilts,” “morgue,” “and,” and “everyone.”
The
process continued for the rest of the volume. She reinserted nouns, verbs,
prepositions, and adjectives everywhere. After a few hours the volume was
complete again, in her handwriting in her own notebook. It was all transcribed
again and lovely. She felt proud. She could feel Samuel there in the volume, at
the expense of her poem. He was reassembled, triumphant, in his Spartan verse.
She could appreciate him once more for what he wrote, not just her memory of
him. The pleasure of once again being complete.
The
happiness waned though when she saw that that would not change anything. Samuel
was still gone. Samuel would not come back because she filled in the blanks
spots in her book. Samuel existed on the pages of his poetry, but he did not
leap off the pages in the tangible way that Froid could hope for. She could see
his hands where the charcoal may have smudged on the manuscript, but she could
not hold it. She knew the charcoal would transfer to his hands and later
everything he touched. He would get it all over her cheeks whenever he had put
his hands on her face to kiss her hello. She had no charcoal on her face that
night. She wrote in pen. She could see him with a poem in his mind sitting on
the ground trying to get it out as fast as possible. They would be in the
middle of a conversation, of breakfast, of reading, and he would have to stop.
He would run, tripping over things or nicking his shoulder on a wall to get to
some paper and charcoal. And then he would write. No, not write. It was a
spasm. It was violent. He would close his eyes and clench his body, sweating as
he poured out what could have been his life into one poem. This happened every
time. Froid would watch him, wondering when he would fall over dead or snap out
of it and resume his life. But it was beautiful. He never looked so alive, so
passionate, so anything as when he was scrambling to write lines of near
incoherence onto a page. It did not matter if no one else could read it. He
could. Poetry was all he cared about. Froid knew that deep down. If it ever came
down to deciding between anything and poetry, Samuel had an obvious and
regretless choice. Once he wrote his poetry he would resume whatever he was
doing as if nothing happened. He was so dissociated from his two worlds that
Froid sometimes thought that he forgot that he wrote poetry. But then she would
remember his choice.
Samuel
had already made that choice before. Froid knew it so well.
As
she sat alone in her apartment, surrounded by her thoughts of Samuel and his
poetry, she decided to complete one last task to commemorate him. She found a
piece of paper that he had made for her that she never used and some charcoal
in a box of art supplies.
She
closed her eyes and began to write.
b(ridge)d
all[forgotten]us
per{feets^feats}fection
faction/faction
bro(apart)ken
4seven
ye(ons)rs
I[what]I
you see^
up!wards? no in
paper.
yes
p(age)s
of wait
WEIGHT
and
you see I.
She
opened her eyes at the completion. She read it to herself. It sounded like
Samuel. She followed his orthography, his methods, like he was there, like she
was him.
She
felt someone watching her. She looked up. It was Samuel.
She
jumped backwards, hitting her head on the wall. When she picked herself back up
he was gone again.
“I
need some air,” she said aloud. She had been by herself in the apartment for
too long. She took a hidden packet of cigarettes with her just in case.
The
wind was harsh that night. It seldom snowed, but it rained enough to make one
wish for it. The sidewalks were icy from when the temperature slithered around
freezing. Froid had seen freshmen slip on this. She was too old to fall.
She
walked past the library with the Suzzallo Reading Room. It looked smaller now.
It seemed less important now that Froid had her own publications in it. She had
read theses of students commentating on her poems. It un-validated everything
for her. Academia seemed to be a lost end. One day she could look back and
appreciate higher learning. There was none of that with her tonight, though. She
wanted to close her eyes, hear Samuel’s voice recite “hIre why’sdumb,” and open
her eyes and be at the edge of a shore. Be in his poem forever.
“Professor
Froid!” called a voice.
Froid
looked around. A freshman boy named Nikolai Murcielago was running towards her,
but he slipped and fell on the ice. He spent the last of his commute sliding
with a pained expression on his face. Froid did not help him up.
“The
assignment for tomorrow… Are we still to read the volume of your poems? And analyze “man.Ia.trieval” by
Coldridge?”
Froid
forgot assigning that at all. “Skip the Coldridge. We can cover it later. I’ll
email out about it tonight once I get home.”
“Oh,
thank you, Professor! Thank you so much for teaching this class. I’m a huge fan
of your work. I can’t wait for you to publish another volume. Maybe you can
bring in a poem for workshop? Just a poem you’re working on? It could be very
interesting!”
Froid
smiled. “I’ll think about it. But for now, do the assignment for tomorrow. I
know you’re not the fondest of doing your homework, but I must remind you of
the adverse effect on your grade that will have.”
The
student nodded in earnest. “I promise I’ll turn it in on time, Professor
Froid!” He walked away, having learned his lesson from the ice, but still
managed to slip and fall again.
Froid
knew she would not workshop one of her poems to the class. It was not because
she did not like criticism, but rather it was because there was no need. She
preferred her own edits to her work. It kept them unspoiled. She also knew
Nikolai Murcielago would not turn his assignment in. She knew him well. What
she did not understand was why he kept pretending like he was going to.
“Nikolai
Murcielago, you just might become a great poet someday,” she mused as she
returned towards her apartment.
Her
apartment was just as she had left it a half an hour ago, save one new
addition. Samuel was in the middle of the room, holding a briefcase, reading
her poem out loud.
“Bridged:
All
forgotten in us
Is
the feet’s feats in perfection
Faction
for faction
Broken
apart
For
seven years and eons.
What
in I do you see?
Upwards? No. In
Paper.
Yes.
Pages
and ages of wait
And
weight.
And
you see I.”
He
smiled at her. Froid could only stare. The silence made Samuel impatient
somehow.
“Yes,
I’m alive, in case you’re wondering.” His speech was different. It was relaxed.
He looked different. He looked resurrected. He looked like how he did in the
poems he wrote.
“But,
how?”
“Well,
technically, I wasn’t alive for a while. Until now. Now I’m alive.”
Samuel
dropped an adverb so casually. Froid had never heard him use one before. It
rattled in her brain like flimsy tin.
“I…
I…”
“Yes,
you. It was you,” he replied.
“What?
What did I do?” Froid thought she was dreaming.
“Samuel,
am I dreaming? What’s going on here?”
He
lifted at her poem and pointed at it. “This
is what’s going on.”
“What?”
Samuel
sighed. “Ambrosia, I just came back to this world by using your poem as a literal
bridge. The least you can do for me is say something other than vacant questions.”
“I….”
“Or
pronouns.”
Froid
composed herself once she poked his face. He smiled sheepishly as she poked his
dimples. He was real after all.
“Permit
me one question.”
“Very
well.”
“How?”
“My
poetry. I was tired of living somewhere that wasn’t there. So I left. After my
brother was destroyed I decided would be a good time to leave. It was nice,
really. I got a lot of writing done. But, I got bored.”
“Bored?”
“There
was something missing. It was boring playing God.”
“Boring?”
“Ambrosia,
please say a different word.”
“Like
what?”
Samuel
sighed. He opened his briefcase and out of it flew thousands of poems. Froid
gasped as they fluttered everywhere, falling like the snow she wished Seattle
would have.
“Is
this all the writing you’ve done?”
“For
six years, yes.”
“That’s
a lot of writing.”
“It
is. I brought it all back with me.”
“What
are you planning on doing with it?”
“Who
knows. Probably publish again, make some money.”
“This
will make a lot of money,” she muttered.
“It
definitely will. The late Samuel Tyler Coldridge miraculously appearing with
volumes worth of unpublished poetry?”
“Sounds
like royalties to me… Are you planning on staying long?”
Samuel
laughed. Froid’s momentary elation fled.
“Thought
so. You’d probably rather be bored than be here anyways, right?”
Samuel
stopped laughing. “Who said anything about leaving?”
“Wait…
what?”
“You
wrote me back into this reality. You better take responsibility of me!” Samuel
teased.
“But…”
“No
buts!”
“Are
you hungry?”
“Famished!”
“And
not for poetry?”
“I
think I’m done writing for a while.”
“Why?”
Samuel
gestured at her apartment. The floor was nowhere to be seen.
“That
and… well… I’m going to sound like the most hackneyed poet to ever walk the
earth, but right now I’ve got the only poem I’d ever need.”
He
smiled at Froid. She knew what he saw.
“I’ve
got higher wisdom,” he said as he gazed at her.
Froid
handed him the manuscript still in the plastic bag. He slapped it aside as he
embraced her, resting his cheek on her hair.
“I
like this version better,” he murmured.
Froid
smiled like the blue of oceans.
“What
are you hungry for?”
“Hmmm…
maybe Peking duck. I’ve always been curious as to why the hell that athlete
liked it so much.”
The
End
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