for my daughter

Here, I leave you. There are tins of water enough to keep you for a little while, dried meat and biscuits by the pantry door. Usually, the mice stay pretty quiet.

The view's not bad. Those are my favorite hills, covered with pines. On a clear April day you can see small paths among the boulders, maybe an eagle if you're looking hard.

Try to remember that the telephone is only for emergencies—may they be few. Keep the doorsill swept. You can never tell who will come riding up from the valley.

These are my books, a motley varied lot, some too much read, some not much read at all. If you want, replace them with your own, or use the shelves for toys and flower vases.

You're going to be on your own—sometimes for months on end. I've found it helps to whistle frequently or make out lists of foods you love and states you've traveled in.

The pump is just outside. The clothesline holds two weeks of laundry if you're planning things. Fasten garbage lids on tight. Little devils come from the woods to forage every night.

I hope you like the sound of mountain streams, by my count three. But I suspect a fourth is somewhere out there. Every spring I think I hear it flowing through the dark.

You might listen for it, too. But now I've said enough, it's yours. And don't forget I've left you butter in the blue and silver dish and stubs and stalks of candles you may light.

[1] After taking my hands in hers, she thought a while before she spoke my name As if this were a protocol she had read about, in some book somewhere.

Some relationships are better left inside closed books.

[2] To know what love tastes like, It is essential that it stays alive.

Till date, none have survived.

[3] The river moves on, pulling behind it a glassy blanket As if it is trying to wake up someone who is fast asleep.

The drowned are never left in peace.

[4] Masks are being distributed in the streets, Select your latest assassin with care.

It’s election time again.

In every half-filled glass a river begging to be named, rain on a leaf, a snowdrift. What we long for

precedes us. What we've lost trails behind, casting a long shadow. Tonight

the music's sad, one man's outrageous loneliness detonated into arpeggios of relief. The way

someone once cupped someone's face in their hands, and the world that comes after. Everything

can be pared down to gravity or need. If the soul soars with longing the heart plunges headfirst

into what's left, believing there's a pure want to fall through. What we drink to

in the end is loss, the space around it, the opposite of thirst, its shadow.