The Story Of Our Lives



1
We are reading the story of our lives
.which takes place in a room
The room looks out on a street
There is no one there
no sound of anything
The tress are heavy with leaves
the parked cars never move
We keep turning the pages, hoping for something
something like mercy or change
a black line that would bind us
or keep us apart
The way it is, it would seem
the book of our lives is empty
The furniture in the room is never shifted
and the rugs become darker each time
our shadows pass over them
It is almost as if the room were the world
We sit beside each other on the couch
reading about the couch
We say it is ideal
It is ideal

2
We are reading the story of our lives
as though we were in it
as though we had written it
This comes up again and again
In one of the chapters
I lean back and push the book aside
because the book says
it is what I am doing
I lean back and begin to write about the book
I write that I wish to move beyond the book
Beyond my life into another life
I put the pen down
The book says: "He put the pen down
and turned and watched her reading
"the part about herself falling in love
The book is more accurate than we can imagine
I lean back and watch you read
about the man across the street
They built a house there
and one day a man walked out of it
You fell in love with him
because you knew that he would never visit you
would never know you were waiting
Night after night you would say
that he was like me
I lean back and watch you grow older without me
Sunlight falls on your silver hair
The rugs, the furniture
seem almost imaginary now
She continued to read"
She seemed to consider his absence
of no special importance
as someone on a perfect day will consider
the weather a failure
"because it did not change his mind
You narrow your eyes
You have the impulse to close the book
which describes my resistance
how when I lean back I imagine
my life without you, imagine moving
into another life, another book
It describes your dependence on desire
how the momentary disclosures
of purpose make you afraid
The book describes much more than it should
It wants to divide us

3
This morning I woke and believed
there was no more to to our lives
than the story of our lives
When you disagreed, I pointed
to the place in the book where you disagreed
You fell back to sleep and I began to read
those mysterious parts you used to guess at
while they were being written
and lose interest in after they became
part of the story
In one of them cold dresses of moonlight
are draped over the chairs in a man's room
He dreams of a woman whose dresses are lost
who sits in a garden and waits
She believes that love is a sacrifice
The part describes her death
and she is never named
which is one of the things
you could not stand about her
A little later we learn
that the dreaming man lives
in the new house across the street
This morning after you fell back to sleep
I began to turn the pages early in the book
it was like dreaming of childhood
so much seemed to vanish
so much seemed to come to life again
I did not know what to do
The book said: "In those moments it was his book
A bleak crown rested uneasily on his head
He was the brief ruler of inner and outer discord
"anxious in his own kingdom

4
Before you woke
I read another part that described your absence
and told how you sleep to reverse
the progress of your life
I was touched by my own loneliness as I read
knowing that what I feel is often the crude
and unsuccessful form of a story
that may never be told
He wanted to see her naked and vulnerable"
to see her in the refuse, the discarded
plots of old dreams, the costumes and masks
of unattainable states
It was as if he were drawn
"irresistably to failure
It was hard to keep reading
I was tired and wanted to give up
The book seemed aware of this
It hinted at changing the subject
I waited for you to wake not knowing
how long I waited
and it seemed that I was no longer reading
I heard the wind passing
like a stream of sighs
and I heard the shiver of leaves
in the trees outside the window
It would be in the book
Everything would be there
I looked at your face
and I read the eyes, the nose, the mouth

5
If only there were a perfect moment in the book
if only we could live in that moment
we could being the book again
as if we had not written it
as if we were not in it
But the dark approaches
to any page are too numerous
and the escapes are too narrow
We read through the day
Each page turning is like a candle
moving through the mind
Each moment is like a hopeless cause
If only we could stop reading
He never wanted to read another book"
and she kept staring into the street.
The cars were still there
the deep shade of trees covered them
The shades were drawn in the new house
Maybe the man who lived there
the man she loved, was reading
the story of another life
She imagine a bare parlor
a cold fireplace, a man sitting
writing a letter to a woman
"who has sacrificed her life for love
If there were a perfect moment in the book
it would be the last
The book never discusses the causes of love
It claims confusion is a necessary good
It never explains. It only reveals

6
The day goes on
We study what we remember
We look into the mirror across the room
We cannot bear to be alone
The book goes on
They became silent and did not know how to begin"
the dialogue which was necessary
It was words that created divisions in the first place
that created loneliness
They waited
they would turn the pages, hoping
something would happen
They would patch up their lives in secret
each defeat forgiven because it could not be tested
each pain rewarded because it was unreal.
"They did nothing

7
The book will not survive
We are the living proof of that
It is dark outside, in the room it is darker
I hear your breathing
You are asking me if I am tired
if I want to keep reading
Yes, I am tired
Yes, I want to keep reading
I say yes to everything
You cannot hear me
They sat beside each other on the couch"
They were the copies, the tired phantoms
of something they had been before
The attitudes they took were jaded
They stared into the book
and were horrified by their innocence
their reluctance to give up
They sat beside each other on the couch
They were determined to accept the truth
Whatever it was they would accept it
The book would have to be written
and would have to be read
They are the book and they are
"nothing else