Exhausted.I can''t climb anymore. Exhausted. I can''t climb anymore. Yet I could, possibly,hang here for a moment, stop this exertion, just cling, catching my breath, to thiscascade of long dark hair which she has let down from the window. The window that didn''tlook nearly so high, only balcony level wasn''t it?, when I started. Those hours ago.Haven''t I been climbing for hours? Above me, my overextended arms quiver and ache allthe way down to their sockets, the round swollen muscles of my shoulders press tomy ears.

Is she calling? I can''t hear. When I look up, I see the cascade of her longhair, nothing beyond that. But it''s as difficult to pause as to climb, so I keep going.To tell the truth, I never paused. Deaf and blind, I keep tugging myself up into thatfalling blackness. I who am bringing her the moon. Aslong as I hold this up. As long as I hold this up, you cannot see me, you don''t knowwho or what I am or why the cloth''s weave has no luster, no pilling, no shading.

I am almost invisible. And when finally my hand trails the rest of me inside, whereonly enough room remains, exactly enough room, for that single hand, the onestill lifted above my head holding the cloth, the I which used to be me will havedisappeared completely, and the material will no doubt tumble to the floor as thoughthere never were anything inside it, nothing filling it out. Or just a capriciousspirit. Or just a fleet intimation of form. What was that, anyway? Don''t tell me it was a life.Just my wrist, my thumb, my curled fingers. They constitute all that remains. A greenglow at the ocean''s horizon after the sun has gone down.

Something like that. Alreadynot even something really, only a particle of something attached to what merely seemedsubstantial but was, instead, the nothing. To which I am subject. To which Igranted so much scope, it crowded me out and I became my own ghost. But inside thedarkness. Inside the. In. Whatare you holding so tightly.

What are you holding so tightly? You can see it''s a corpse. But where are you taking it? It goes where I go. Aren''t you far ahead of the funeral procession? It''s a private affair. Meaning it''s someone you loved? Someone I would have loved to see make better choices. In time, things will get better for you. You don''t know that. What''s to come is just the sentence of my duration. You don''t think feelings can change? If time were some sort of measurement of change, it stopped for me.

Say what you will, don''t you still have the present and your own choices to make? You think that between the past and the future there''s an interval in which I''m considering your question. But there is no interval. You don''t believe in the present? My future is what I carry my corpse into. Whenfinally I let go of my self-pity. When finally I let go of my self-pity, when I sloughed off the garment of my grief hoisting it furiously over my head, I discovered myself wondering what would come next. But it''s you, isn''t it? You''ve caught me unsleeved. Washed clean, a bud after rain. And it''s clear to you that my body isn''t only the shaft of an archaic instrument.

It''s a communion you want to share. With my eyes covered of course, you''re free to take me in. But wouldn''t you like even more? Can you sate yourself on just my vitality, my pure form? I''ve already entered your experience sensorially, not as mere information. And however much you stare, I stand beyond any place where your command, your flirting, your feigned closeness reaches. As the seen thing, I''m immutable and still worth your attending to. And it could be I''ll let you go further if you give me a hand lifting this last blindness from my face.