We kept the tape because it kept her voice —four seconds of it, saying we weren't home,please leave a message after the small tone,and thank you, in the voice she used for strangers.
Not even her real voice. The company one.The one she'd put on like a better coat.And yet when the machine wore out, and the manat the shop said he could not save the tape,
I understood that she would die again,smaller this time, the size of four short seconds,the size of please, the size of after the tone —and that I would not be there, and could not stop it,
and that some griefs are just the earlier griefarriving late, in a cheaper, second form,to a house where the machines are giving outone at a time, and taking her along.
About the elegyA poem of mourning or reflection, often for someone who has died.
An elegy grieves. It usually mourns a person who has died, though it can also mourn a place, a time, or something lost. It may move from sorrow toward acceptance, or simply stay with the loss. Elegies take no single fixed shape.
Listen for Grief spoken plainly, remembered details, and where the poem leaves the loss.
4 poems in this form →@saoirse
Elegies for things that don't usually get one: a coat, an answering machine, a mill.
6 poems · 7 readings received · 9 written · 4 followers
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