Because you huddled weeping in your seat as our car arrowed its way to your childhood home. Because “arrowed,” not sped nor raced nor hurried. Because Diana. Because goddess and hunt and especially moon. Because words. Because allusion. Because this is what I do. Even while you cry.
Because you were only an hour earlier asleep. Because your father was not, until the beeping machines were silenced a day after our arrowing drive and he euphemistically, metaphorically was. And so would always forever after be was, be is-not.
Because your mother heard the tumbling thud and walked in dull dread to find the cause at the bottom of their stairs, then called the people you call though it was already too late, though already aware of absence and ache rising over the horizon. And called us after because it was already too late.
Because it was late I answered. Because words are what I do while you drop deeply into dreaming. Because you were dreaming so did not hear the ring. Because I picked up quick.
Because nothing good comes by phone at two a.m. Because nothing did.
Because I woke you. Because your father because aneurism because stairs and gravity and becausebecausebecausebecausebecause while the moon continued to rise outside though neither of us saw it. Not yet. Because you were crying. Because there are too many becauses and none at all.
Because six-year-olds sleep like cats and because we whispered and because you cried so quietly and because it wasn’t too cold and because he was swaddled in blankets anyway he did not wake when we took him from his bed and pressed and buckled and secured him into his car seat, all five points of the harness because the world we know can turn in a moment. Because it just had.
Because we turned the car east and headed in the wrong direction for death. Because Avalon. Because Blessed Isles. Because Valinor. Because symbol and allusion and allegory. Because words. Because this is what I do. Even while you cry.
Because the near-empty road led to nothing but more empty. Because despite all, the Earth still rotated. Because planetary mechanics and bodies in space. Because the space between our bodies. Because I turned from your silvered tears and wounded curl to better etch in memory for future words this road this fencepost this supernaturally lucent moon this orange orange moon I would not write for you but for me so full of the beauty this world could hold this moon so close because horizons and angular illusion that hung so heavy and huge over our harrowed arrowed journey to your father’s waning face and over your mother’s ashen face and over our sleeping child’s still new in the mirror and over yours aging pale against cold glass and yes over mine in my mind’s eye already writing this story I knew I would write because the white white pages need feeding because this is ever what I do.
Even while.