Hope (July)

Nadezhda is Russian for Hope. Hope will see through the Salon of Betrayal. She’ll survive departmental politics. Hope will live in a new town to be near his last known sighting. She sometimes wonders why he chose her. Hope is an actress, she can remember lines. July, August, September, she knows the metre. She secretes them around the apartment, where mustachio’ed beetles cannot nibble. She secretes them in her mind where they laugh, gust, flame. Absence makes a manuscript grow. Hope doesn’t give it a title. Hope sits in her bed scribbling memories. Someone else can name the manuscript, afterwards.