(Week Seven) Improvisation #2 of Form

of Claudia Emerson's "Triptych"

'Studio'

She had said she needed this, and time,
to write, and often she had written here, the room

almost bare: only a desk beneath
tall, thin windows, a lamp, loveseat,

a dictionary the wind browsed--all sentient
with waiting. Then, when she could not abandon

the lie, grief became its sharper part, secreted
into the hours she was still obligated

to come here--the long mirror where she had
admired herself returning the pale gray

of a shadowless wall. The typewriter old, anchor-
heavy, she began again--filling sheet after

sheet with drafts she would abandon, the black
ribbon of ink spooling vowels, words, ragged

lines away from her in pale relief, her head
bowed beneath curtains so sheer they might have been

meaningless except in giving form
to the wind, when there was one.

My improv':

She had said this was for the best, what she needed
out of life. She thought this way, until nothing else
was true. Alone for most of the day, there was no
one to talk to about it. The dishes had grown bored
with the story, the furniture sleepy. And unlike Cinderella
she couldn't sing to birds. Though she always hoped
for such good friends, even if they were mice. So goes
a fairytale. But her version is more likely of
those found in Grimm. The prince charming in a bowtie, chasing
after a law degree. Every woman of his wore the same size
slipper, its glass never keeping a trace.