On World-Making

To love is to tell the story of the world.     There was an ocean with a boat     mountains     a meadow     too painful to stare at directly. Haven’t I been here before? Yes.     No:     not quite here. “It is not as if,” the philosopher writes, “an I exists independently over here and then simply loses a you over there.” In the mist, a man rigs the Suzelle, little red boat. Loved labored for months, learning to tie the right knot. The exact and only knot that will keep the vessel tethered. She rehearsed for the worst possible thing. “The attachment to you,” it is written, “is part of what composes who I am.” I know/knew those hands, hers. I watched her dust the sourdough with flour at midnight a moon between her fingers.     Gone went Loved. But the half-world of her in me was me.     It was lit by the moon.