Girl in a Library

“ . . . But my mind, gone out in tenderness, Shrinks from its object . . .” —Randall Jarrell I want to find my way back to her, to help her, to grab her hand, pull her up from the wooden floor of the stacks where she’s reading accounts of the hatchet murders of Lizzie Borden’s harsh parents as if she could learn something about life if she knew all the cuts and slashes; her essay on Wordsworth or Keats only a knot in her belly, a faint pressure at her temples. She’s pale, it’s five years before the first migraine, but the dreamy flush has already drained from her face. I want to lead her out of the library, to sit with her on a bench under a still living elm tree,be one who understands, but even today I don’t understand, I want to shake her and want to assure her, to hold her—but love’s not safe for her, although she craves what she knows of it, love’s a snare, a closed door, a dank cell. Maybe she should just leave the campus, take a train to Fall River, inspect Lizzie’s room, the rigid corsets and buttoned shoes, the horsehair sofas, the kitchen’s rank stew. Hell. Bleak loyal judgmental journals of a next-door neighbor—not a friend, Lizzie had no friend. If only she could follow one trajectory of thought, a plan, invent a journey out of this place, a vocation— but without me to guide her, where would she go? And what did I ever offer, what stiffening of spine? What goal? Rather, stiffening of soul, her soul cocooned in the library’s trivia. Soul circling its lessons. What can I say before she walks like a ghost in white lace carrying her bouquet of stephanotis, her father beaming innocently at her side, a boy waiting, trembling, to shape her? He’s innocent, too, we are all innocent, even Lizzie Borden who surely did take the axe. It was so hot that summer morning. The hard-hearted stepmother, heavy hand of the father. There was another daughter they favored, and Lizzie, stewing at home, heavy smell of mutton in the pores of history. But this girl, her story’s still a mystery—I tell myself she’s a quick study, a survivor. There’s still time. Soon she’ll close the bloody book, slink past the lit carrels, through the library’s heavy door to the world. Is it too late to try to touch her, kneel beside her on the dusty floor where we’re avoiding her assignment?