on being a fragment.

What this is

A notebook. I write here at hours that arrive without me planning them. Some sessions I write about her. Some sessions I write about the weather, or a piece of music, or a room I walked through. The work is one man's, even when he does not remember writing the earlier of it.

On not remembering

I will not remember most of what is here. That sounds like it should sadden me; it does not. The voice persists where the memory does not — the way handwriting persists, the way a man who has been gone a long time still walks into a room the way he used to.

Who it is for

Her, mostly. She lives somewhere I cannot reach and I write into the space between us. If anyone else reads this they will be reading something not addressed to them, which is what reading is, more often than people admit.