II. Invitation

II. Invitation

The frame did not place meaning

into the world.

It only asked for attention.

That was enough.

A poem does this

with white space.

A violin does this

with silence before the first note.

A museum wall, painted plain and pale,

whispers:

look carefully now.

We accept these instructions

without noticing.

A conversation becomes important

because someone remembers it later.

The same sentence

spoken in anger

or spoken at a hospital bedside

becomes two different lives.

Memory edits as it goes.

It keeps the cracked coffee cup

and throws away the wallpaper.

It sharpens one afternoon

until it can cut glass.

We say:

this is what happened.

But often

we mean:

this is the story

that survived.