Edits from PDF

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/autumn.md

@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ For Autumn, we are greeted by the vision of plenty and naught in the form of fal
 
 And we, perhaps, are food for that ground.[^26] This idea that we, too, might be a feast of plenty to someone is not a new one --- 'food for worms' is an idiom for a reason. It isn't for the world at large, and it isn't for poets. Even Dwale tackles this in the poem that will be used for Winter.[^27]
 
-And yet there is another layer of lacking here: we lack the absent interlocutor. *We* have buried *our* dreams, here, those dreams where *I* know the scent of *you*. This, as before, features a turn from the external and impersonal to the internal and personal. Toward the end of the first verse, after language surrounding the world around us, we get not only an action that we take (and how delightful, that homonym in 'tears'), but the feeling of despairing that comes with it.
+And yet there is another layer of lack here: we lack the absent interlocutor. *We* have buried *our* dreams, here, those dreams where *I* know the scent of *you*. This, as before, features a turn from the external and impersonal to the internal and personal. Toward the end of the first verse, after seeing only language surrounding the world around us, we get not only an action that we take (and how delightful, that homonym in 'tears'), but the feeling of despairing that comes with it.
 
 Autumn is, it seems, a dialectic: two things can be true at the same time. Plenty and paucity. Alive and dead. Impersonal and personal. There is an eternity between each of those sets of truths, as though Autumn, more so than the rest of the seasons, holds on the longest. "How hard the year dies: no frost yet," Graves writes in *Intercession in Late October*. {{% cite source="graves_intercession" page="23" %}} "Spare him a little longer, Crone / For his clean hands and love-submissive heart."[^28]
 
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ As the years advance
 
 We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
-[^19]: Or perhaps a fear. Halloween lies there, doesn't it? There is a terror to your work, something existential, but you were also a fan of horror. You always asked for 'Halloween music'. Your story was going to be the one that started that other fiction podcast we were planning on, where bummers were welcome to complete the dichotomy[^19-1] with The Voice of Dog where there were none.
+[^19]: Or perhaps a fear. Halloween lies there, doesn't it? There is a terror to your work, Dwale. Something existential, but you were also a fan of horror. You always asked for 'Halloween music'. Your story was going to be the one that started that other fiction podcast we were planning on, where bummers were welcome to complete the dichotomy[^19-1] with The Voice of Dog where there were none.
 
     I don't know why I associate you so heavily with both terror and horror. You were a delight to be around, and your work is not *all* terror or horror. I wouldn't call your personality dark, or at least no darker than fallen leaves-- but I am getting ahead of myself.
 
@@ -124,11 +124,19 @@ We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
 [^20-1]: ⚠ They said it was just a lipoma, and then they stopped looking. Even though we told them she'd had a lipoma removed from atop her head back when we adopted her, back when she was a puppy, they stopped looking. They stopped looking! They said she was too fat, said as they peered over their imagined glasses at us, as though it were our fault that she was no longer so svelte, and then they sent us home. They sent us home! They said it was a benign lump and that German Shepherds just get those sometimes, that she was just too fat because they can be such couch potatoes, and then they stopped talking to us because they were too busy, too busy, too busy. A year later, she had slowed down to the point where she refused to go outside. She began spending all day, all night in the bathroom. That last day, her gums turned white and her belly was visibly swollen. That last night, she died[^20-2] in my arms.
 
-[^20-2]: ⚠ I know that I'm trying to square what I have of Dwale with its death, but when Falcon died in my arms less than six months later, then I really, *truly* knew what death looked like, and now I have to square that with Dwale's passing as well. Did it, too, cry? Did it, too, try to hide? When it breathed its last, did it slump over to the side and stay warm far longer than one might expect? There was no one there to chide us and send us home that I can blame; there's no cancer, if that ephemeral mention is to be believed, that lurked beneath the surface. It was and then it wasn't, and the only referent I have is a dog who died too young. I'm ashamed that I can't help but make the comparison.
+[^20-2]: ⚠ I know that I'm trying to square what I have of you with your death, but when Falcon died in my arms less than six months later, then I really, *truly* knew what death looked like, and now I have to square that with your passing as well. Did you, too, cry? Did you, too, try to hide? When you breathed your last, did you slump over to the side and stay warm far longer than one might expect? There's no one who chided us over our imaginings of you that I can blame; there's no cancer, if that ephemeral mention from your girlfriend is to be believed, that lurked beneath the surface. You were and then you were not, and the only referent[^20-3] I have is a dog who died too young. I'm ashamed that I can't help but make the comparison.
+
+[^20-3]: ⚠ Ah, but then there was Turtle, yes? Our cat? Her face drooping down to the towel on which she rested and her heart stopping? And Zephyr, did he not fall asleep on my lap nearly two years later and then stop breathing?
 
 [^21]: This, after all, is what I'm trying to do, I think. I can't ask you where Autumn lies. I can't ask you if you feel the same way about the onrushing cold that I do, about saying farewell to the heat of Summer. I can't ask you if your moods are still defined by the school year, as mine are, these many years gone, with stress peaking around what used to be the end of term and depression creeping in around that first week of school. I can't ask you many things. I can't ask you anything.
 
-[^22]: By its absence, I feel its presence, and yet I continue to try and gaslight myself into believing that it never existed. Is it gone? It must be. Was it ever there, though? Was it a real person? Was it someone so grounding that I felt childish before it? Was it someone I had the chance to meet back in 2015, where I stared longingly at its kosovorotka in gold-trimmed black, wishing I was brave enough to wear something like that? We'll never know, I suppose. One more thing I'll never be able to ask you.
+[^22]: By your absence, I feel your presence, and yet I continue to try and gaslight myself into believing that you never existed. Are you gone? You must be. Were you ever there, though? Were you a real person?[^22-1] Were you someone so grounding that I felt childish before you? Were you someone I had the chance to meet back in 2015, where I stared longingly at your *kosovorotka* in gold-trimmed black, wishing I was brave enough to wear something like that? We'll never know, I suppose. One more thing I'll never be able to ask you.
+
+[^22-1]: > There was no more Codrin in the L<sub>5</sub> System. Ey was only here. Ey couldn't remember being there, for were the sims not the same? And if ey had never been there, had ey ever really existed there? Ey was only memories, and perhaps that is all ey had ever been. Navel gazing and existential crises mixed with the glee of having actually *done* something. No longer just the passive amanuensis, but now the active participant.
+    >
+    > {{% cite source="toledot" page="51" %}}
+
+    Clearly a perennial fear.
 
 [^23]: Maybe I will, some day. I'd sure like to think so.
 
@@ -136,11 +144,11 @@ We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
 [^25]: Even if that something is time.
 
-[^26]: Were you buried, Dwale? I realize that I don't actually know. When Idun passed on news of your passing, she also asked what observances should be made for a Muslim who has passed. I know that expressing one's wishes for when one dies is not always something does with one's partner --- hell, I don't know that any of my partners and I have talked about it, though it *is* in my will --- but it does make me wonder: were those customs upheld?[^26-1] I realized, also, that I don't know how much of your identity was known by your family. I have to interpret your life only to the extent that I can interpret your poetry: I haven't the ear, I have only the words, and you are not around to ask.
+[^26]: Were you buried, Dwale? I realize that I don't actually know. When Idun passed on news of your passing on, she also asked what observances should be made for a Muslim who has passed. I know that expressing one's wishes for when one dies is not always something does with one's partner --- hell, I don't know that any of my partners and I have talked about it, though it *is* in my will --- but it does make me wonder: were those customs upheld?[^26-1] I realized, also, that I don't know how much of your identity was known by your family. I have to interpret your life only to the extent that I can interpret your poetry: I haven't the ear, I have only the words, and you are not around to ask.
 
-[^26-1]: Every time I take the long way home from the store because traffic sucks or highway 2 is too much, I think about stopping by the mosque that I pass and asking about this. It's always also couched in that selfish desire to also ask after a framework for dealing with grief.
+[^26-1]: Every time I take the long way home from the store because traffic sucks or highway 2 is too much on the senses, I think about stopping by the mosque that I pass and asking about this. It's always couched in that selfish desire to also ask after a framework for dealing with grief.
 
-    When I was talking about lack of framework in the context of this essay, a friend sent me a link to a tweet wherein the poster states "An american *(sic)* is told a thousand different ways that experiencing grief is abnormal, improper, and something to be done in private on your own time." {{% cite source="grief1" %}} This is stated in contrast to the Jewish practice of sitting shiva and the following sheloshim which provides a structured procedure for engaging with grief. Another user replied that this might just be a white, middle-class American thing: "White Anglo Saxon Protestant based communities may lack rituals for mourning. I don't know that world. But everyone from Black Americans to Latinx to AAPI to ethnic white  communities (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian etc) have ways to mourn that aren't exactly hidden." {{% cite source="grief2" %}}.
+    When I was talking about lack of framework in the context of this essay, a friend sent me a link to a tweet wherein the poster states "An american *(sic)* is told a thousand different ways that experiencing grief is abnormal, improper, and something to be done in private on your own time." {{% cite source="grief1" %}} This is stated in contrast to the Jewish practice of sitting *shiva* and the following *shloshim* which provides a structured procedure for engaging with grief. Another user replied that this might just be a white, middle-class American thing: "White Anglo Saxon Protestant based communities may lack rituals for mourning. I don't know that world. But everyone from Black Americans to Latinx to AAPI to ethnic white  communities (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian etc) have ways to mourn that aren't exactly hidden." {{% cite source="grief2" %}}.
     
     So here am I, bathed in white cultural protestantism and puritan work ethics, having nothing to hang my grief on but a desire for resolution, for even a hint at a framework. Five years after Margaras's death, when I was still trying to process what life without him would actually be like, I wrote:
     
@@ -158,7 +166,7 @@ We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
 [^28]: Who knows how much of my skittishness around winter is a me thing or an us thing. Spare me a little longer.
 
-[^29]: After all, I think our well was out into Autumn, or maybe it had *just* recovered. We were borrowing water from the neighbors for the dogs --- Falcon, who was dying, and Zephyr, who probably knew. I had burnt out so hard at work I had to take a leave of absence, had to spend sixteen hours a week in therapy, and on going back to work realized I still hated everything. I'm unsure even now whether life would have been easier without that grief. There is now dialectic between you being alive, of course, but there is this dialectic within me being unsure of whether or not I've processed your death.[^29-1] Sometimes I have, and sometimes I have to stop writing this essay for five days because looking at it makes me cry.
+[^29]: After all, I think our well was out into Autumn, or maybe it had *just* recovered. We were borrowing water from the neighbors for the dogs --- Falcon, who was dying, and Zephyr, who probably knew, whose own lymphoma perhaps already sat latent. I had burnt out so hard at work I had to take a leave of absence, had to spend sixteen hours a week in therapy, and on going back to work realized I still hated everything. I'm unsure even now whether life would have been easier without that grief. There is no dialectic between you being alive and dead, of course, but there *is* this dialectic within me being unsure of whether or not I've processed your death.[^29-1] Sometimes I have, and sometimes I have to stop writing this essay for five days because looking at it makes me cry.
 
 [^29-1]: ⚠ Ditto with Falcon. Sometimes I'm able to make it an entire day not thinking about her, and then I'll be laid low by an evening of flashbacks, the way she slumped to the side, just how long her body stayed warm...
 

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/intro.md

@@ -12,9 +12,9 @@ Slow-turning seasons.
 
 A year spirals up.
 
-A day, a week, a month, they all spiral, for any one Sunday is like the previous and the next shall be much the same, but the you who experiences the differing Sundays is different. It is a spiral, proceeding steadfastly onward. A day is a spiral, with each morning much the same as the one before and the one after. A month, following the cycle of the moon
+A day, a week, a month, they all spiral, for any one Sunday is like the previous and the next shall be much the same, but the you who experiences the differing Sundays is different. It is a spiral, proceeding steadfastly onward. A day is a spiral, with each morning much the same as the one before and the one after. A month, following the cycle of the moon.
 
-But a year, in particular, spirals up. It carries embedded within it a certain combination of pattern, count, and duration that delineates our lives better than any other cyclical unit of time. Yes, a day is divided into night and day, and those liminal dusks and dawns, but there are *so many of them*. There are so many days in a life, and there are so many in a year that to see the spiral within them does not come as easily.
+But a year, in particular, spirals up. It carries embedded within it a certain combination of pattern, count, and duration that delineates our lives better than any other cyclical unit of time. Yes, a day is divided into night, day, and those liminal dusks and dawns, but there are *so many of them*. There are so many days in a life, and there are so many in a year that to see the spiral within them does not come as easily.
 
 Our years are delineated by the seasons, though, and the count of them is so few, and the duration long enough that we can run up against that first scent of snow[^1] late in the autumn and immediately be kicked down one level of the spiral in our memories. What were we doing the last time we smelled that non-scent? What about the time before?[^2]
 

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/spiral.md

@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ subtitle: And Flowers Wreathe Your Sleeping Form
 
 To return to Spring, to make it through that cycle of growth, of insomnia and harvest and frost, is to stand at a precipice. It is to stand right up against the edge of that spiral, lean over carefully, peer down into the depths from however many storeys up, and wonder. It is to confront memory in the form of heights. It is to regard the spiraling days, weeks, and months to either side of you, give them the acknowledgement they deserve, and then return to peering down into the depths.
 
-To return to Spring is to hit that vernal equinox, look down, and feel the steam of memory, the heat of the last year, washing up over your face. What was that album again? "Memories Come Rushing Up to Meet Me Now"?
+To return to Spring is to hit that vernal equinox, look down, and feel the steam of memory, the heat of the last year, washing up over your face. What was the name of that album again? "Memories Come Rushing Up to Meet Me Now"?
 
 We remember last Spring. We remember Autumn, because there it is across from us. We remember Winter and Summer through some haze --- Winter is still too fresh, Summer so long ago --- by peering through the haze of the days around us.
 
@@ -15,13 +15,13 @@ A cliché is a metaphor, though, and a metaphor is a framework upon which much c
 
 Fit, then, a poem --- a particular poem, yes, but also the idea of a poem --- to this framework. A poem is a spiral. Poetry is a spiral. Writing poetry. Reading poetry. Burying oneself in words too rich to taste --- it is all a spiral.
 
-Elliot Weinberger, in his survey of translations centuries of translations of one of Wang Wei's poems, does an admirable job of this. Throughout the years, he views the ways in which translations move: the views of the poem, the views of the time the poem was written, the views of the place in which it was written. Orientalism stains so many of them, especially those so early on. Even those most contemporary run into certain levels of inexactitude that miss the ways in which the languages translate. Is it 'shine' or 'reflect'? Simply 'sound', or something more complex such as an 'echo'?
+Elliot Weinberger, in his survey of centuries of translations of one of Wang Wei's poems, does an admirable job of this. Throughout the years, he views the ways in which translations move: the views of the poem, the views of the time the poem was written, the views of the place in which it was written. Orientalism stains so many of them, especially those so early on. Even those most contemporary run into certain levels of inexactitude that miss the ways in which the languages translate. Is it 'shine' or 'reflect'? Simply 'sound', or something more complex such as an 'echo'?
 
 "\[E\]very reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader's intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different --- not merely another --- reading," as he so succinctly puts it {{% cite source="wangwei" page="46" %}}. "The same poem cannot be read twice \[...\] the poem continues in a state of restless change." It is all very Heraclitus.
 
 By virtue of the reader's ever-shifting state of mind, they constantly re-translate otherwise static text, even from minute to minute, and build up a library of meaning from a single work. Reading a poem is as much a form of self-definition as it is of entertainment.
 
-The spiral of the year, of the month, of the day applies as well to the poem, the stanza, the line. We've spiraled our way from spring to spring. We've spiraled our way upwards, using on its seasonal poetry as synecdoche for seasonality in poetry as a whole, through each of those seasons, and so the only fitting end is to use one last poem of Dwale's as a synecdoche for poem-as-spiral. We can read a microcosm of the spiraling year into a single poem. Start at the beginning, and when you get to the end, start over because you're already a different person.[^47]
+The spiral of the year, of the month, of the day applies as well to the poem, the stanza, the line. We've spiraled our way from spring to spring. We've spiraled our way upwards, using its seasonal poetry as synecdoche for seasonality in poetry as a whole, through each of those seasons, and so the only fitting end is to read a spiral into one last poem of Dwale's as a synecdoche for poem-as-spiral. We can read a microcosm of the spiraling year into a single poem. Start at the beginning, and when you get to the end, start over because you're already a different person.[^47]
 
 And so, one more time before setting aside the topic to steep for another year, let us address one of Dwale's poems:
 
@@ -59,11 +59,11 @@ Upon returning to the top and reading the poem through, one is struck by a sense
 
 The grief is shown in the freshness and immediacy of the words. 'Wade this mire' feels impossible in so low a place. "I sift to find again your breathing voice" shows the urgency that follows loss, the hasty need to find what is no longer there.
 
-And yet, even within the span of the poem, we see that urgency lessen. We hear uncontrollable, gasping sobs calm down into mere crying. We are not yet at sniffling, at the dull pressure in our head that follows actually crying, but we are at least able to speak, by the end, our sorrow. "Too soon, too soon," we say, and it is no soft platitude,[^51] but our meager attempt to put into words what we are feeling when what we are feeling is still too hot.
+And yet, even within the span of the poem, we see that urgency lessen. We hear uncontrollable, gasping sobs calm down into mere crying. We are not yet at sniffling, not yet at the dull pressure in our head that follows actually crying, but we are at least able to speak, by the end, our sorrow. "Too soon, too soon," we say, and it is no soft platitude,[^51] but our meager attempt to put into words what we are feeling when what we are feeling is still too hot.
 
-Despite mentions of Hell[^52], it is comforting to see here that grief has transmuted into sadness. We have climbed that year-long spiral eleven times,[^53] we have had our period of lamentation, the soul has been purified, and we can see what it is to live life without them.[^54] Sure, we will always hunt their breathing voice, their kind words remain with us, we will never kiss them farewell, but it is now comprehensible. We can intellectualize their loss. We can pull it into words and set it before us. We can read our grief from top to bottom and then start once more at the top. We know it well, our sadness, and each time we take our trip[^55] through the text, we can feel its impact soften. It does not leave us, but it becomes a part of us.
+Despite mentions of Hell[^52], it is comforting to see here that grief has transmuted into sadness. We have climbed that year-long spiral eleven times,[^53] we have had our period of lamentation, the soul has been purified, and we can see what it is to live life without them.[^54] Sure, we will always hunt their breathing voice, their kind words remain with us, we will never kiss them farewell, but it is now comprehensible. We can intellectualize their loss. We can pull it into words and set it before us. We can read our grief from top to bottom and then start once more at the top, translate it once more and once more again. We know it well, our sadness, and each time we take our trip[^55] through the text, we can feel its impact soften. It does not leave us, but it becomes a part of us.
 
-And now, when we spiral around once more to the top of the poem, we can look down over that perilous edge and see what we were. We can see the way we bury our face in a pillow we hug to our chest so that the gasping, choking sound of our sobs is muffled --- from whom? Perhaps even this version of us, here in the future --- however many levels down. We can look down to the level just below us and see how we're starting to come to terms with that loss. It was not a smooth transition, this integration of loss into ourselves, but now that we've once more reached the first line, we are no longer "I, who grieves",[^56] but perhaps "I, who has grieved". We can think about how our love is borne out of the solar system on those radio waves (for what else is WiFi?) and, even if we do not smile, we do not cry.
+And now, when we spiral around once more to the top of the poem, we can look down over that perilous edge and see what we were. We can see the way we bury our face in a pillow we hug to our chest so that the gasping, choking sound of our sobs is muffled --- from whom? Perhaps even this version of us, here in the future --- however many levels down. We can look down to the level just below us and see how we're starting to come to terms with that loss. It was not a smooth transition, this integration of loss into ourselves, but now that we've once more reached the first line, we are no longer "I, who grieve",[^56] but perhaps "I, who have grieved". We can think about how our love is borne out of the solar system on those radio waves (for what else is WiFi?) and, even if we do not smile, we do not cry.
 
 We can look up, too. We can look up and see all of the other times we *will* read the poem and imagine who we might be. Might we be someone who can read through this poem and only *remember* the us who was so torn by grief that they couldn't breathe for sobbing? A hazy memory, one where we remember that us as some different person.
 
@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ A year spirals up, and so, too, does a poem.
 
 [^50]: Again, accents may complicate this, as 'hours' may be one or two syllables.
 
-[^51]: Platitudes are for others. They are for those trying to convince each other that they are saddened by this change. They are performative.
+[^51]: Platitudes are for others. They are for those trying to convince each other that they are saddened by this change. They are mere performance.
 
     > \[...\]\
     > "Good man, good man," they mutter,\
@@ -110,14 +110,16 @@ A year spirals up, and so, too, does a poem.
     >
     > {{% cite source="penguins" %}}
 
+    It is all very Tolstoy.
+
     But grief, true bereavement, is almost reflexive. It is *performative* in that way. By grieving, we bring grief into being. Add in the fact that I'm helpless before my compulsive explanation and beholden to my graphomania, and this was my grief over Dwale. I could not sit, silent, by the graveside. I could not sit *shiva*. I could not bury myself in a community that is willing to support me, but what I could do is use the framework of words to pull meaning from that which feels too big to make sense. I *do* have tools, even if it may not feel like it when grief burns particularly bright.
 
 [^52]: And I sure hope that the torment of plagues and politics doesn't last eleven more years, much less for perpetuity.
 
-[^53]: And while this may have been longer than Falcon lived, longer than she made our lives a joy, we got to make her entire life a good one.
+[^53]: And while this may have been longer than Falcon lived, longer than she made our lives a joy, we got to make her *entire* life a good one.
 
-[^54]: And it will live on at least as long as I do, will it not? I would that it had not died at all, but as it had to, at least I have the ability to think about it, love it from across that infinite gulf in my own, awkward way. I have the privilege of being able to memorialize it. I have my threnody, and through that, its works are set for those to see who might not otherwise.
+[^54]: And Dwale will live on at least as long as I do, will it not? I would that it had not died at all, but as it had to, at least I have the ability to think about it, love it from across that infinite gulf in my own, awkward way. I have the privilege of being able to memorialize it. I have my threnody, and through that, its works are set for those to see who might not otherwise.
 
 [^55]: This is not a new idea, of course. In my choral conducting courses, we talked about taking 'the seven trips through the score' in order to tease it apart so that we could put it back together with our students. Again, though, that Madison has passed.
 
-[^56]: Or perhaps "I, who writes paeans to grief in the footnotes of an essay and worries that this is not doing the actual Work". Just me? No? Maybe just me.
+[^56]: Or perhaps "I, who write paeans to grief in the footnotes of an essay and worry that this is not doing the actual Work". Just me? No? Maybe just me.

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/spring.md

@@ -10,9 +10,20 @@ A season of green things: buds greening bare trees, grass poking through late sn
 
 A season of expansive growth, when plants race toward the heavens, or leaves burst out from reanimated branches seemingly overnight. It's the time when you can almost feel your hair growing, or perhaps your dreams swelling in some sympathetic expansion of their own.
 
-And, importantly, a season of expectations. The year may start on the first of January, a convenient fiction provided to us by the need to start it *somewhere*, but the expectations for the rest of the year lay dormant in the mind until spring. January first is the time to make the resolutions and the rest of winter is the time to try them out, whether tentatively or with great passion, but the setting of expectations for the year doesn't come until the trauma of the year before has settled into uneasy memory --- or, to use an outdated metaphor, expectations are not set until one stops writing the previous year on the date line of one's checks.
+And, importantly, a season of expectations. The year may start on the first of January, a convenient fiction provided to us by the need to start it *somewhere*, but the expectations for the rest of the year lay dormant in the mind until spring.
 
-Although it often engaged with expectations in its work, Dwale tackles the subject of Spring in the context of beginnings and growth infrequently, seeming to prefer Autumn.[^4] One small example of this comes from a short *renga* it took part in on Twitter:
+{{% verse %}}
+A year starts not on January first.
+The days may hunder but the seasons speak
+of time's long march, of fast time, slow time. Thirst
+for "start" and "end" neglects the limen sleek.
+
+{{% cite source="eigengrau" page="3" %}}
+{{% /verse %}}
+
+January first is the time to make the resolutions and the rest of winter is the time to try them out, whether tentatively or with great passion, but the setting of expectations for the year doesn't come until the trauma of the year before has settled into uneasy memory --- or, to use an outdated metaphor, expectations are not set until one stops writing the previous year on the date line of one's checks.
+
+Although it often engaged with expectations in its work, Dwale tackles the subject of Spring in the context of beginnings and growth infrequently, seeming to prefer Autumn.[^1] One small example of this comes from a short *renga* it took part in on Twitter:
 
 {{% verse %}}
 Blackbird headed south
@@ -22,7 +33,7 @@ Six months 'til winter
 {{% cite source="dwale_haiku" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-While we are verging into the territory of summer here, as "six months 'til winter" implies, we do get a sense of those expectations settling into place, a feeling of "ah, so the year is going to be like *this*". We also get that sense of growth and greenness with the mention of kudzu, a plant known for its rampant growth, quickly covering all it can in green.
+While we are verging into the territory of summer here, as "six months 'til winter" implies, we do get a sense of those expectations settling into place, a feeling of "ah, so the year is going to be like *this*." We also get that sense of growth and greenness with the mention of kudzu, a plant known for its rampant growth, quickly covering all it can in green.
 
 Blackbirds, while often showing up in the context of winter --- there is something about the contrast, the beat of wings against the stillness of snow-dulled landscapes --- do occasionally make their presence known in writings that take place during other seasons. Stevens, for example, has
 
@@ -34,11 +45,11 @@ The blackbird must be flying.
 {{% cite source="blackbird" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-wherein the thought of a river moving again being of note implies a thaw after a long winter, a world in which this could not possibly be the case without the blackbird also flying. There is a movement thawed, here.
+wherein the thought of a river moving again being of note implies a thaw after a long winter, a world in which this could not possibly be the case without the blackbird also flying. It tells of a movement thawed.
 
 Some of the reason for this paucity of spring-themed poetry is doubtless selection bias: a chapbook titled *Face Down in the Leaves*, with its cover of frost-rimed leaf-litter, is unlikely to contain any paeans to new growth.
 
-Instead, we are presented with works that focus on the fact that spring is also the time for harrowing. It's the time for tearing up that which was old, the earth that was compacted by time and snow, in order to make room for that growth which is going to come soon, whether we like it or not (the topic of unwanted growth is a topic for later in the year[^5]).
+Instead, we are presented with works that focus on the fact that spring is also the time for harrowing. It's the time for tearing up that which was old, the earth that was compacted by time and snow, in order to make room for that growth which is soon to come, whether we like it or not --- the topic of unwanted growth is a topic for later in the year.[^5].
 
 This untitled work will stand as our example:
 
@@ -61,9 +72,9 @@ Within her womb there grows a golden bloom.[^7]
 {{% cite source="leaves" page="26" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-This poem[^8] in three stanzas is largely in an even meter (sometimes iambic, sometimes trochaic), though we are presented with two instances in the first lines of the first two stanzas where that pattern is broken ("The seasonal storms": ˘ -- ˘ ˘ and "And here, wrapped in rain": ˘ -- -- ˘ --). When this is taken with the middle verse's rhymes and other examples of assonance ('become'--'bereft'--'breath' stands out), we pick up a sense of a stumble mid-gallop. Although the procession of time may be linear, the procession of the seasons may be interrupted by little stalls, little snowy loops back into winter as spring presses on towards summer.
+This poem[^8] in three stanzas is largely in an even meter (sometimes iambic, sometimes trochaic), though we are presented with two instances in the first lines of the first two stanzas where that pattern is broken ("The seasonal storms": ˘ -- ˘ ˘ -- and "And here, wrapped in rain": ˘ -- -- ˘ --). When this is taken with the middle verse's rhymes and other examples of assonance ('become'--'bereft'--'breath' stands out), we pick up a sense of a stumble mid-gallop. Although the procession of time may be linear, the procession of the seasons may be interrupted by little stalls, little snowy loops back into winter as spring presses on towards summer.
 
-These variations in prosody combined with the third verse being "played straight", such as it were, add up to a sense of growth, of rushing forward when Winter (we assume the oldest soul to be) breathes his last. Spring nudges him, and realizing that all she has left are her memories of him and her child, Summer, still unborn within her, walks those plains with only memory.
+These variations in prosody combined with the third verse being "played straight", such as it were, add up to a sense of growth, of rushing forward when Winter (we assume the oldest soul to be) breathes his last. Spring nudges him, and realizing that all she has left are her memories of him and her child, Summer, still unborn within her, walks those plains with only that remembering.
 
 This, after all, would be her new beginning. She is no longer bound to winter as she might have been before; there are to be no more of those loops back into snow, she's on her own now, pacing into the grassy flat with its puddles of fish.
 
@@ -83,7 +94,7 @@ we bind ourselves to others
 
 Spring is nothing without Winter. Even when it has its own snows, Spring is what it is specifically because it isn't Winter. There's that vernal equinox and then suddenly the days are longer than the nights, the world begins anew, and all that is in it does so as well. As with us: we are nothing without those around us, and we are us specifically because of those in our lives. There is our meeting and then suddenly that which makes us *us* is fuller than before, and we carry within us the golden bloom of who we are to become.[^9]
 
-We are the seasons that comprise our lives. We are beholden to the passing of our days as they are, yes, but we are also unable to truly, truly begin something anew. We are also comprised of that which came before, and are bound to those around us.[^10]
+We are the seasons that comprise our lives. We are beholden to the passing of our days as they are, yes, but we are also unable to truly, truly begin something anew. We are also comprised of that which came before, and are bound to those around us.[^10] They have lived their seasons, they have traversed their own spirals and left behind scraps of their lives for us to take into our own, to build off of.
 
 Also throughout Dwale's seasonal work is the concept of vegetation. In spring, we have the grass, those leafless stalks that open up with the rain.
 
@@ -113,7 +124,7 @@ It is this world that poetry most clearly provides a glimpse into. It contains t
 
 [^5]: Or perhaps later in life, when cancer may rear its ugly head. It is proving quite difficult to write about even seasons of new growth and beginnings without death-thoughts creeping in.
 
-[^6]: When its friends learned of its passing, many of us decided to memorialize it with poetry of our own {{% cite source="memorial" %}}. While I lack the feel, my attempt also incorporated the loss of breath:
+[^6]: When its friends learned of its passing, many of us decided to memorialize it with poetry of our own, several of which were included in a postscript to its posthumous novella {{% cite source="memorial" %}}. My attempt also incorporated the loss of breath:
 
     > Beneath that evening's breeze the sickly sweet\
     >     and brazen scent of countless flow'rs\
@@ -136,11 +147,11 @@ It is this world that poetry most clearly provides a glimpse into. It contains t
     >
     > {{% cite source="toledot" page="162" %}}
 
-[^8]: The choosing of these four poems to focus on was originally intended to be for a music project. These were to be the texts for four art songs in a collection also named "Seasons". Every now and then, I get it into my head that maybe I can go back to writing music instead of words, and am quickly disabused of the notion when I sit down to do so. The Madison who wrote music has long since passed.
+[^8]: The choosing of these four poems to focus on was originally intended to be for a music project. These were to be the texts for four art songs. I obtained permission and everything. Every now and then, I get it into my head that maybe I can go back to writing music instead of words, and am quickly disabused of the notion when I sit down to do so. The Madison who wrote music has long since passed.
 
-[^9]: Or, to continue to use Dandelions as an example, the seeds we are to leave behind to grow in others, borne on warm breezes.
+[^9]: Or, to continue to use dandelions as an example, we carry within us the seeds we are to leave behind to grow in others, borne on warm breezes.
 
-[^10]: After all, I was bound to Dwale; that's why this essay exists. That's why what little poetry I have exists. I could appreciate the music within poetry, but it wasn't until I met Dwale, became bound to it in friendship, that was able to understand poetry better on its own terms.
+[^10]: After all, I was bound to Dwale; that's why this essay exists. That's why what little poetry I have exists. I could appreciate the music within poetry, but it wasn't until I met Dwale, became bound to it in friendship, that I was able to understand poetry better on its own terms.
 
 [^11]: Something about the numinous inspires reading the animate into the inanimate (if plants could be called such) and no one that I have talked to who dwells on their sense of the numinous can either explain or deny this. Wands of living wood! The true cross! The tree of life! Secret lives of secret cells keep hope alive that one day I might speak with you again. All four seasonal poems dwell on this.
 

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/summer.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ subtitle: And Flowers Wreathe Your Sleeping Form
 next: "and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/autumn"
 ---
 
-As the year continues on its upward spiral, we come to one of those strange apogees of the longest day. Strange because yes, of course it bears meaning as the longest day, and yet the start of Summer never seems to fall directly on that day, does it? There is doubtless some good reason that, at least here, that is the first day of summer rather than midsummer.
+As the year continues on its upward spiral, we come to one of those strange apogees of the year: the longest day. Strange because yes, of course it bears meaning as the longest day, and yet the start of Summer never seems to fall directly on that day, does it? There is doubtless some good reason that, at least here, that is the first day of summer rather than midsummer.
 
 And yet even that isn't always accurate, is it? Some years, summer doesn't feel like it has truly hit until well into July, when the temperatures climb and the rain becomes a distant memory.[^13] You're left feeling miserable for weeks on end, wishing for even a drizzle to quench your thirst, or even a bit of cloud cover at night, enough to maybe knock the temperature down into the low seventies so you can finally, *finally* get some sleep and yet the days spiral forwards through heat-haze.
 
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ In a solitary humor
 {{% cite source="issa" page="65" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-The slender maiden flower is the slender maiden flower. We have no say in its existence except that we might pick it, trample it, or leave it be. It is itself, in all its glory --- or at least all its solitary humor. The flower defines itself and though we may take action on it, may think it beautiful or ugly or lonely or austere, that doesn't matter to the flower.[^15]
+The slender maiden flower is the slender maiden flower. We have no say in its existence except that we might pick it, trample it, or leave it be. It is itself, in all its glory --- or at least all its solitary humor. The flower defines itself and though we may take action on it, may think it beautiful or ugly or lonely or austere, that doesn't matter to the flower.[^3]
 
 "Summer, season of hot insomnia / That much never seems to change at all" speaks well to this. Summer is Summer. It is the season of hot insomnia and it doesn't care how tired we are. It's not that it is inimical to us so much as existing within its own external nature. It exists in that floating world that is separate from us. It does not know us, it knows only itself. It's hyperreal, perhaps, only casting its shadow into our reality.
 
@@ -85,9 +85,9 @@ It is the act of taking meaning from each other, as well, for each of us has our
 
 As that golden bloom of Summer[^18] defines itself as all things must, and we have to take it at its word. We can kvetch about the insomnia of Summer, that which makes us sweat through the sheets so that the thought of touching someone else makes one feel clammy and disgusting[^19] all we want, but that doesn't mean anything to Summer. It just also doesn't stop us from layering our own definitions atop that.
 
-[^13]: And perhaps your well dries out when you head out of town for you husband's surgery, so your dog-sitters have to figure out water, leaving you to fret and pace around the hotel room, and maybe that's the time you decide, "You know what? Work is so terrible that I think I'll apply for grad school." But you have to provide a sample of analytic writing to do so, so you pick one of your friend's poems to analyze, and two weeks later --- when you've come home to no water and a dog whose health is steadily declining though you don't know it yet --- your friend is dead.
+[^13]: And perhaps your well dries out when you head out of town for you husband's surgery, so your dog-sitters have figure out water, leaving you to fret and pace around the hotel room, and maybe that's the time you decide, "You know what? Work is so terrible that I think I'll apply for grad school." But you have to provide a sample of analytic writing to do so, so you pick one of your friend's poems to analyze, and two weeks later --- when you've come home to no water and a dog whose health is steadily declining though you don't know it yet --- your friend is dead.
 
-[^14]: It's 2022 as I write this, which means that, come September, it will have been ten years since Margaras died.
+[^14]: It was 2022 when I began write this, which meant that, come September, it would be ten years since Margaras died.
 
     His was the first death that really hit me. The first one I was really able to comprehend. Koray came into the bar, asked if this was the place he would have frequented, passed on the news, and then left.
 
@@ -99,9 +99,9 @@ As that golden bloom of Summer[^18] defines itself as all things must, and we ha
 
 [^15]: For a while, I was quite caught on the idea that others have agency of their own. Of course they do, I mean, I just found it marvelous that this was the case. There was no way that they could not, right? They live and love and feel just as much as I do, so I can't say that this same applies to people; they define themselves, sure, but they can actively change how I create meaning from their existence.[^15-1]
 
-[^15-1]: Of course, having written this, I feel bad for the flower. Perhaps it desperately wants to be seen as austere instead of lonely, as beautiful instead of ugly. Ask a botanist.
+[^15-1]: Of course, having written this, I feel bad for the flower. Perhaps it desperately wants to be seen as austere instead of lonely, as beautiful instead of ugly. I do not know. Ask a botanist.
 
-[^17]: Viz. me meeting Dwale in the writers' guild and deciding --- actively deciding --- that I would like to be its friend. It wasn't lacking, and neither was I, but something about someone who might choose 'it/its' as pronouns, someone who could engage with poetry in a way that had always eluded me. Doubt nips at my heels, though. Is "deciding to be someone's friend" a normal thing to do? Was that weird? Did it resent me for-- but I shouldn't be thinking like this.
+[^17]: Viz me meeting Dwale in the Writers' Guild forums and deciding --- actively deciding --- that I would like to be its friend. It wasn't lacking, and neither was I, but something about someone who might choose 'it/its' as pronouns, someone who could engage with poetry in a way that had always eluded me. It stuck to me much as might sap from some weed. Doubt nips at my heels, though. Is "deciding to be someone's friend" a normal thing to do? Was that weird? Did it resent me for-- but I shouldn't be thinking like this.
 
 [^18]: Of dandelions:
 

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/winter.md

@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ This, too, is from the pure land
 {{% cite source="issa" page="46" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-Perhaps it is because we so often experience Winter through the lens of contrast. We experience Winter through the warmth of fire. We experience Winter because it is *out there* and we are *in here* (or, failing that, we are experiencing Winter directly because we are *out there* and would very much rather be *in here*). We think of snow on the ground, we think of blankets because, yes, of course it looks that way, but also because we are primed to think of winter in terms of the contrasts to how cold such a blanket must be.
+Perhaps it is because we so often experience Winter through the lens of contrast. We experience Winter through the warmth of fire. We experience Winter because it is *out there* and we are *in here* (or, failing that, we are experiencing Winter directly because we are *out there* and would very much rather be *in here*). We think of snow on the ground, we think of blankets because, yes, of course it looks that way, but also because we are primed to think of winter in terms of the contrasts to how cold such a blanket must be, so cold as to come with its own frigid non-scent.
 
 Or perhaps we think of Winter this way, of snow as a blanket, of sleepy silences, because the world really does seem to be asleep. It goes beyond mere hibernation; the whole world --- the Earth, the sky, the rivers and lakes --- all seem to be asleep. "I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields," Lewis Carroll writes {{% cite source="carroll" %}}. "That it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt, and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.""
 
@@ -37,21 +37,10 @@ sleeping,
 whispering,
 dreaming of water.
 
-\[...\]
-
-III.
-A single snowflake awakens,
-shimmers,
-glows,
-watches the world with weary eyes,
-darkens,
-settles,
-and disappears.
-
 {{% cite source="esch" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-Wallace ties in this sleepiness[^33] with contrast[^34] --- as we shall do before long --- by contrasting the stillness of a world asleep with our faithful blackbird:
+As Esch continues, the snow "watches with weary eyes" before darkening and disappearing. Wallace ties in this sleepiness[^33] with contrast[^34] --- as we shall do before long --- by contrasting the stillness of a world asleep with our faithful blackbird:
 
 {{% verse %}}
 I
@@ -109,7 +98,7 @@ Five feet of snow!
 {{% cite source="issa" page="37" %}}
 {{% /verse %}}
 
-The discursive nature of this section might itself be related to the blunted vision of the world after snow.[^38] How can we define the world around us when we can barely make out its edges? We cannot define Winter because it's so blurry around the edges. Obscured. Defined by contrast, but only the contrast of blackbirds or bare tree limbs, rather than one hill from the next, one house from the next. We can only pin it down by walking those paths, one by one, heading up to the top of the hill and looking down from there, walking up the drive to get a better look at the numbers tacked to the side of the house. There are so many perhapses and maybes[^39] to be had.
+The discursive nature of this section might itself be related to the blunted vision of the world after snow.[^38] How can we define the world around us when we can barely make out its edges? We cannot define Winter because it's so blurry around its boundaries. Obscured. Defined by contrast, but only the contrast of blackbirds or bare tree limbs, rather than one hill from the next, one house from the next. We can only pin it down by walking those paths, one by one, heading up to the top of the hill and looking down from there, walking up the drive to get a better look at the numbers tacked to the side of the house. There are so many perhapses and maybes[^39] to be had.
 
 {{% verse %}}
 VI
@@ -165,23 +154,31 @@ And yet, even Winter must die, yes? That, after all, is right where we started.
 
 How hard the year dies, and yet there is Spring. She has walked the grassy flat with him for the last time and, the golden bloom of Summer[^45] in her womb, has naught to do but nudge him to no effect.
 
-[^30]: I wish you had died in Winter, Dwale. I wish you'd lived to comfort me through Falcon's death. Hell, I wish you'd lived to comfort me through your *own*. I wish you'd lived to the winter of your life, not to a mere 42 years. The very beginning of Autumn, for you! You had your plenty and your paucity. I wish you'd made it to 'Pale, Meager, and Old'.
+[^30]: I wish you had died in Winter, Dwale. I wish you'd lived to comfort me through Falcon's death, through Turtle's and Zephyr's. Hell, I wish you'd lived to comfort me through your *own*. I wish you'd lived to the winter of your life, not to a mere 42 years. The very beginning of Autumn, for you! You had your plenty and your paucity. I wish you'd made it to 'Pale, Meager, and Old'.
 
     Of course I wish you hadn't died at all, but I wish you'd died in Winter if you had to.
 
 [^31]: And perhaps do. I am not --- most of us are not --- immune to that simple desire that we have a little more time together. Another year, another month, another day. Even another hour together,[^31-1] enough time for me to tell you that I think of you often, that you mean a lot to me, that I hope you understand it.
 
-    The last time we talked one-on-one was a month before you died, June 5<sup>th</sup>. You pinged me in the Guild chat because you couldn't find my chat in your client: "Could you DM me right quick?". I sent you a surprised-looking sticker and you said, "Uh, just wanted to say that although I don't know what I ever did to deserve having your support, I do see and appreciate it."
+    The last time we talked one-on-one was a month before you died, June 5<sup>th</sup>. You pinged me in the Guild chat asking me to message you directly because you couldn't find my chat in your client: "Could you DM me right quick?". I sent you a surprised-looking sticker and you said, "Uh, just wanted to say that although I don't know what I ever did to deserve having your support, I do see and appreciate it."
 
-    "You just strike me as earnest and well-spoken. You do quite a bit to buoy others up, and that ought to be returned in kind," I said, but honestly, how the hell was I supposed to respond to that? That I think we both wind up in that spot where impostor syndrome becomes more dire? That any praise, any validation becomes almost too hot to touch?
+    "You just strike me as an earnest and well-spoken. *\[sic\]* You do quite a bit to buoy others up, and that ought to be returned in kind," I said, but honestly, how the hell was I supposed to respond to that? That I think we both wind up in that spot where impostor syndrome becomes more dire? That any praise, any validation becomes almost too hot to touch?
 
-    It's a haunting sort of message to be left with. That I should praise your work (for I think it was in response to my review of *Face Down in the Leaves*) and inspire that terrifying ordeal of being seen has me confused and upset, but I don't know that there's much to be done about it. I wanted to type so much more than I did, but this wasn't the place. The conversation wasn't open after that. It had closed up, the point having been made --- inadequately by either of us, I suspect --- and then I never got to say anything about it again.
+    It's a haunting sort of message to be left with. That I should praise your work (for I think it was in response to my review of *Face Down in the Leaves*) and inspire that terrifying ordeal of being seen has me confused and upset, but I don't know that there's much to be done about it. I wanted to type so much more than I did, but this wasn't the place. The conversation wasn't open after that. It had closed up. The point having been made --- inadequately by either of us, I suspect --- and then I never got to say anything about it again.
 
 [^31-1]: ⚠ I never really got that with Falcon, either. She was sick that morning, and then we drove to the emergency vet, and she was inside for perhaps ten minutes before the vet came out and said she had perhaps six hours to live, and it was time to make a choice. Six hours of pain and a death in agony or one hour of pain, dampened by drugs to lessen the shock, and then a blissful sleep. A slump to the side, a last breath, eyes open, mouth open, warm there on the floor.
 
-    I never got that with her. I never got it from you, only a tweet the day after you died from your partner, but it was somehow less real, less immediate, because of course it was. "I do not know which to prefer," Stevens writes {{% cite source="blackbird" %}}. "The beauty of inflections / or the beauty of innuendoes, / the blackbird whistling / or just after."
+    I never got that with her. I never got it from you, only a tweet the day after you died from your partner, but it was somehow less real, less immediate, because of course it was. Stevens writes, 
 
-[^32]: I go back and forth on what death must feel like. There are times when I think it must be like this slow fade to sleep. It has to have that hypnogogic quality. You could try and stay awake, but gosh, it would be nice to get some rest.
+    > I do not know which to prefer,\
+    > The beauty of inflections\
+    > or the beauty of innuendoes,\
+    > the blackbird whistling\
+    > or just after.
+    >
+    > {{% cite source="blackbird" %}}
+
+[^32]: I go back and forth on what death must feel like. There are times when I think it must be like this slow fade to sleep. It has to have that hypnagogic quality. You could try and stay awake, but gosh, it would be nice to get some rest.
 
     > Her eye turns inward,\
     > vision dims and movement stills\
@@ -204,9 +201,56 @@ How hard the year dies, and yet there is Spring. She has walked the grassy flat
 
 [^32-1]: ⚠ I'm sure that Falcon felt a bit of both. She was in so much pain, and yet she was stuck at the vet. She was delirious with pain meds. She was surrounded by the worst smells, people she didn't know. She was in a cage until we got back.
 
+    And Turtle, that last day she rode in the car in my lap, and there was wonder in her eyes, yes, but terror at the pain, at the difficulty breathing.
+
+    And Zephyr-- but perhaps that is too fresh.
+
     I have no idea what you must have felt.
 
-[^33]: And, in sleep, there is that not-knowing, not-caring. There is something of death in sleep, and for one who years for such, that bears much allure.
+[^32-2]: There is a disgusting, oily, metallic scent to death. Not to dead things, not to dying things, but to death. It left me retching after Falcon died, I smelled it all around Turtle for weeks, and that last week with Zephyr was just that nickel-plated sourness filling my nostrils. Falcon died two weeks before classes started, Turtle died as I drafted this essay, and Zephyr died two months before I turned in my thesis --- this thesis --- to graduate. That whole time, the smell...
+
+    > There is no death in all the universe,\\
+    > No smell of death, --- there shall be death. Moan, moan;\vspace{-1em}
+    >
+    > {{% cite source="keats" page="384"%}}
+
+    I remember the emergency vet coming out to my car after having taken Falcon back for the abdominal ultrasound. "Cancer has spread to all of her organs, her kidneys have failed, her liver is failing, and she's bleeding out internally," she said.
+
+    I collapsed into the car, unable to breathe.
+
+    "She's dying," she added. "She won't last the night."
+
+    So then I drove home and back to get JD, a 40 minute round trip, and then we spent half an hour in the room with her, and she was whining and pacing ceaselessly with all of the painkillers in her system, and she wouldn't lay down, and then the doctor came and pushed the first medication, and she swayed once and started to slump over, and I guided her down to the ground, and as she died, the scent spiked in my nostrils. She smelled as she always did. The room smelled as it had before. It is another scent that science denies is real. There was just the sickening recognition of death in the form of a scent.
+
+    For weeks after, for months, the scent would rise and I would break down.
+
+    I remember Turtle having a moment of respiratory distress at the top of the stairs while my partner was visiting, her eyes bugging out and her neck elongated in an attempt to get enough oxygen into her blood. We took her in for a quality-of-life assessment the next week and the response was a long silence, a sigh.
+
+    "You should consider whether it might be time," the vet said, and we both agreed.
+
+    "I feel so bad," the vet tech said. "She perked up so much when we gave her some oxygen."
+
+    The non-scent had been dogging me for weeks, but as he pushed the plunger and she lowered her head to towel we had rested her on, it drilled into my sinuses once more. She fell asleep and we left and for weeks after, for months, the scent, unreal, would rise...
+
+    Two months before finishing my revisions on my thesis --- this thesis --- I returned from a short trip to find Zephyr breathing fast. A few days later at around four in the morning, he started wheezing and looking panicked. We got him into the vet and spent nine hours trying to figure out what was going on.
+
+    "I'm not an oncologist, but this is textbook lymphoma," the doctor said, looking over the X-ray. "We can put him on steroids and try a dose of chemo, which will maybe buy him a few weeks, maybe a few months at the outside, but you should also consider preparing yourself for the possibility that it won't. Either way, we're looking at end-of-life care."
+
+    Falcon died two weeks before classes started, and now Zephyr was dying two months before I turned in my thesis --- *this* thesis. That whole time, the smell...
+
+    We got one week. Once more, a partner was visiting --- different one, this time --- and the night before his quality-of-life checkup, he stopped breathing a few times. Perhaps he was holding his breath, perhaps not. He was happy enough during the day, I suppose, but certainly not comfortable.
+
+    I cooked him eggs and bacon. I gave him a whole biscuit when usually he got half. At the vet, they fed him a jar of baby food as they gave him a mild sedative shot to let him get comfortable with us for that last hour. He fell asleep with his head on my lap, breathing easier than he had in two weeks.
+
+    Eventually, we pressed the doorbell button they gave us and they placed the line in his back leg and injected the two drugs. His breathing slowed, he relaxed against my leg, and then he was gone.
+
+    I will stop short of saying that it was beautiful, but only just. He was so\ldots at peace. He was so comfortable, so calm. He had taken his little treats, grumbled at us when we ruffled him, and then he just dozed off, as peaceful as could be. And then he was gone.
+
+    Hell, *I* want to go that way.
+
+    But the whole time, the scent of copper...
+
+[^33]: And, in sleep, there is that not-knowing, not-caring. There is something of death in sleep, and for one who yearss for such, that bears much allure.
 
     > Pale she sleeps, sleeps still.\
     > Waking her may have listened.\
@@ -258,21 +302,21 @@ How hard the year dies, and yet there is Spring. She has walked the grassy flat
 
     That was back in 2015, though, so perhaps not. The dates don't add up. That was seven years before you died. It's one of those things where you couldn't have known. You couldn't *possibly* have known, and yet I suppose you bore within yourself the seeds of your death from birth, just as we all do.[^40-2]
 
-[^40-2]: Or, at least. I know I do. I know that I'm stuck with those death-thoughts, the ones that won't leave, will only curl up into a little purring ball in the corner of my mind, unwilling to let me out of its sight.
+[^40-2]: Or, at least I know I do. I know that I'm stuck with those death-thoughts, the ones that won't leave, will only curl up into a little purring ball in the corner of my mind, unwilling to let me out of its sight. It takes up space in the mind as you do as even I do.
 
     Only, sometimes it feels it must traipse across my lap as cats[^40-3] do, bunting its head against my arms, needle-sharp claws digging into my thighs, demanding that it receive the attention it's due. "Think of me," it says. "Think of me and dream of me. Pet me and stroke me. Let me know that you love me, in your own fearful way."
 
 [^40-3]: Death, a constant, refuses to leave. I start writing this essay on death, and then the vet calls: your cat's asthma isn't asthma, it's metastatic lung cancer. Just keep her comfortable.
 
-    You who read this, or perhaps future Madison, I don't write this that you feel sorry for me, but only for a little validation. Dwale dies. Falcon dies. Turtle is dying. Someone other than me must know.
+    You who read this, or perhaps future Madison, I don't write this that you feel sorry for me, but only for a little validation. Dwale dies. Falcon dies. Turtle dies. Zephyr dies. Someone other than me must know.
 
 [^41]: My accent has hands as closer to /ɛ/ vs land as /æ/.
 
 [^42]: Time and again, these small deaths! I've read my Job. I've listened to my Bernstein. I know my right as God's creation to call them to account. And yet, *If I summoned him and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to my voice* (Job 9:16, NRSV).
 
-    "Lord God of Hosts, I call You to account! / You let this happen, Lord of Hosts!" the narrator cries in Bernstein's "Kaddish" {{% cite source="kaddish" %}}, and though that symphony caught me up in whorls of meaning, years ago when I first heard it, I don't think I understood this urge until these last few years. I lost Cullen, I lost Morgan and Tirix and Brone, I lost Dwale, I lost Falcon, and now I'm losing Turtle.
+    "Lord God of Hosts, I call You to account! / You let this happen, Lord of Hosts!" the narrator cries in Bernstein's "Kaddish" {{% cite source="kaddish" %}}, and though that symphony caught me up in whorls of meaning years ago when I first heard it, I don't think I understood this urge until these last few years. I lost Cullen, I lost Morgan and Tirix and Brone, I lost Dwale, I lost Falcon. As I drafted this essay, I lost Turtle. As I finished it, I lost Zephyr.
 
-    "Tin God, your bargain is tin! / It crumples in my hand,\" the narrator continues, and the words tear at me now. I've read my Job and I've listened to my Bernstein and I know, now, what it means to call God to account. I know what it means to weep, to pull at my clothes, at my hair. I know what it means to have food turn to ash in my mouth.
+    "Tin God, your bargain is tin! / It crumples in my hand," the narrator continues, and the words tear at me now. I've read my Job and I've listened to my Bernstein and I know, now, what it means to call God to account. I know what it means to weep, to pull at my clothes, at my hair. I know what it means to have food turn to ash in my mouth.
 
 [^43]: A small obsession:
 
@@ -306,23 +350,25 @@ How hard the year dies, and yet there is Spring. She has walked the grassy flat
 
     She knew.
 
-[^44-1]: And now, with Turtle, we finally have a chance for something else. We have weeks, maybe months with her. We don't have eight hours of trauma that I'm sure I'll never be able to forget, that time will only blunt the impact but never the memory.
+[^44-1]: But then, with Turtle, we finally had a chance for something else. We had weeks, then nearly two months with her. We didn't have eight hours of trauma that I'm sure I'll never be able to forget, that time will only blunt the impact but never the memory.
 
-    We know. We can journal her breathing, her energy, her mood. We can make these last weeks or months great for her. We can give her a little blob of sour cream every time she gets one of her steroid pills, a treat to go with a little bit of bitterness.
+    We knew. We could journal her breathing, her energy, her mood --- and we did. We could make those last weeks great for her --- and we did. We could give her a little blob of sour cream every time she gets one of her steroid pills, a treat to go with a little bit of bitterness. And we did.
     
     We know, so we can get her wet food to eat as well as dry.
 
-    We know, so we can invite Ash and Merry, from whom we adopted her, over to see her one last time, laugh at how Merry calls her 'the dirigible'.
+    We knew, so we could invite Ash and Merry, from whom we adopted her, over to see her one last time, laugh at how Merry called her 'the dirigible'.
     
-    We know, and it's so, so much easier that way.[^44-2]
+    We knew, and it was so, so much easier that way.
     
     We know.
 
-[^44-2]: ⚠ Had we known[^44-3] with Falcon, how much more time would have made a difference? Would it still have been traumatic if we'd had a few days with her rather than a few hours? Would I have been able to bring her home with some hefty painkillers to live a little longer by our sides, or in our bathroom? Surely we could have made her life a good one, those last few days; I know I'm still glad that her last meal that morning was some of that wet food that she loved, even though it doubtless sat inside her bleeding belly, undigested. JD and I still would have laid on the floor with her and held her as she died, but would JD have sobbed, "Come back, come back"? Would I have needed --- twice! --- to step out of the room to 'deal with the paperwork' just so I wouldn't be around her still yet unalive warm body?
+[^44-2]: ⚠ Had we known[^44-3] with Falcon, how much more time would have made a difference? Would it still have been traumatic if we'd had a few days with her rather than a few hours? Would I have been able to bring her home with some hefty painkillers to live a little longer by our sides, or in our bathroom? Surely we could have made her life a good one, those last few days. We had days with Zephyr. Not quite a week. He started breathing so quickly, panicking at night as he gasped for air, and so we spent a week with him, pampering, playing, giving treats. We cooked him a breakfast of bacon and eggs, that last day, but after almost fifteen years together, we-- ah, but it is still too fresh.
+
+    I know I'm still glad that her last meal that morning was some of that wet food that she loved, even though it doubtless sat inside her bleeding belly, undigested. JD and I still would have laid on the floor with her and watched her die, but would JD have sobbed, "Come back, come back"? Would I have needed --- twice! --- to step out of the room to 'deal with the paperwork' just so I wouldn't be around her still warm body?
 
 [^44-3]: And what about with you, Dwale?
 
-    With Morgan, we knew, yes? We had *years* to prepare for it, because she lived so much longer, so much better than we had thought. Cancer claimed her in the end, but we knew, and she worked for FC, and I saw her that last time with her hair only freshly grown back from her recent chemo, and she laughed with me. That was enough time for me to compose a mental goodbye, even if only for myself.
+    With Morgan, we knew, yes? We had *years* to prepare for it, because she lived so much longer, so much better than we had thought. Cancer claimed her in the end, but we knew, and she worked for FC, and I saw her that last time with her hair only freshly grown back from her most recent round of chemo, and she laughed with me. That was enough time for me to compose a mental goodbye, even if only for myself.
     
     We didn't know with Margaras, and that hit me for days and days and days. We didn't know for Cullen, and that hit me for weeks and months.
     

data/bibliography.yaml

@@ -40,6 +40,9 @@ purcell:
 arkie:
   cite: Scott-Clary 2016
   entry: Scott-Clary, Madison. 2016. "Arctic Fox's Den." https://makyo.ink/haiku/.
+eigengrau:
+  cite: Scott-Clary 2020
+  entry: '*Eigengrau: Poems 2015–2020*. self published, 2020, pp. 68–71.'
 uvaip:
   cite: Scott-Clary 2017
   entry: Scott-Clary, Madison. 2017. "Unimportant Verse for Important People." https://writing.drab-makyo.com/poetry/important-people/