30 JAN 06
She said she'd found herself at the table--maybe an hour had passed, or two, the light had changed--listing the words inside the words "Pictures come back to me," her mind a fury of searching, suddenly promised language from this odd source and, in the rearranged letters, relief from a thousand snapshots. It was as though the pain of her inability to help the other woman, or any of the women and girls, was eased somehow in making these cramped lists.                        [click image below to see a page]

She wants to paint the words into the just-stretched canvas--to layer the lists with leaves she's saved, pressed between pages of phonebooks for years, "for later."

Sometimes there's a word written down that can't be used, for lack of a letter. "No L" it says beside a few crossed out.

blame no L   lock no L   talk no L

She said her chest felt like it had been scraped clean with a rake. Coke, memo, sum, some, samurai, cadmium, comma, coma, tubes, tuba, breast, brim, use, upstream.

"You can't get rid of smoke by pouring water on it. We don't have any water anyway." (Looking at her page, on which there's smoke but no fire, ice but no water.)

Later, when we were walking, I could see she was spelling, in her mind, things that we were saying--listening and talking but also spelling words out, and from time to time writing one down, if the letters were right.

. . . . . .

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