Mortality: a meditation on Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems

The afternoon radio has some nonsense disintegrating in the air,
while I’m in the laundry room downstairs folding clothes
in front of a dirty window. The interiors of the basement flood
with goldenrod from diffused September light. I’m reminded of
an epistolary epigram by Whitman… I send you the within… who
is buried in a pocket of earth. The artifact of an event unable to
open the lid of soil to explain itself, to demonstrate its elaboration.
Algae-green lines move down my arm. They change depending on
the angle and tautness of the surface. The sleeves of the yellow t-shirt
are composed on the chest of its fabric. I place it on the closed lid
of the washing machine in front of me and I’m reminded of a friend who
took care of his father in the final interiors of cancer, who said that,
in the moment of departure, it was like “my father filled the room…”
a movement like the last breath of birds exploding from a tree,
changing direction in one fluid motion as if to create a hinge
in their migration.
This occurs at smaller infinitudes in the body,
organs adjust to stress or denouement with panic, alarm, defense –
then!, a sudden reconciliation.
…a body of bodies…
A change in direction.
Processes of formation form a brief interior before departure.
I try to imagine a letter accomplishing such a feat. The ink changes
and evolves within time. Evolution involves a depreciation of qualities.
Perhaps, it is the task of the letter to fail of the form and be superseded by the content:
his father made his body into a “gorgeous nothing”, setting ink to a fragmented space
so that, for a moment, the sun rose and set in a single room, in between the breath
between syllables.

Nick Hilbourn's work has recently appeared in A Minor, Maudlin House and HyperText. His chapbook, Folk Gospels, is available from CW Books. He can be contacted through X (@nhilbourn), Instagram (@nhilbourn) or his blog (largethingslargerthings.tumblr.com).