Poems for the Passing

Halfway to the paper, Kate's pen paused. It sat poised on a barrier of resistance she could sense. She had been considering her options for the last weeks, not that it had helped. Even now, right down to this last moment, she still wasn't sure what she would choose. Sign the contract. Don't sign the contract. Sign it. Don't sign. It seemed each heartbeat sent her thoughts skittering back the way they had come, like a tennis match in her mind.

There truly were no clues indicating where the journal had come from or who the author had been. Certainly, there was no way to know how it had come to be a part of her father's collection. He, of course, wouldn't have left any answers to this little mystery because that would have been too convenient. No, she thought, he meant to be vexing to the bitter end; the singular audience for his private joke.

"Is there something wrong?" asked the suit across from her. Bound up by her own thoughts, Kate had forgotten his name as soon as he'd said it. "Is there a problem with the contract? If you have concerns, we can discuss them."

She looked up at the youthful face, half-illuminated by the sun slanting through her office window. The other half of his expression hidden by shadow. He seemed equal parts eager and anxious, though he was doing his best to conceal both behind a facade of pointed bravado. The little suit had been promoted , and Kate knew she must be one of his first assignments.

"No."

The word came out as a whisper. Clearing her throat, Kate tried again. "No, it's great. Thank you for making the changes I asked for. It's a big deal."

Looking down she says it out loud. "This is everything I always dreamed about."

And there's the truth. The Problem. Everything she had wanted, of, worked for - she was getting it. She's going to be published. There's a contract in front of her, and plenty more opportunities besides. But could she sign? Should she sign?

The little black journal sat on her desk, looking the same as it had when she first laid eyes on it weeks before. A bit careworn, with yellowing pages and a scent that seemed to hook at something in her chest - that innocuous notebook had changed her whole life. A fact made even more curious when she considered that it had been inside her own house for years.

When Kate's father passed away, she avoided his vacant room and her meager inheritance for weeks. , some attorney-type had turned up on her doorstep and begged her to " sign the papers." She had, and was rewarded a days later when she opened the mail to find a check for $20,000. It felt as if something clicked inside her. She sprinted to his abandoned room and began tearing through the scant belongings he had left behind.

Her father had been brutish and contentious her entire life, and he was the family she had ever known. He loved her, and he showed her in his own ways; but they had been at loggerheads as long as Kate could remember. When he got sick, she did what any responsible child does. She moved him in and took care of him. By the time he passed, they had forged a tacit peace, any true communication strictly avoided.

By the time she flipped open the little black book, her father was long gone. He'd had no remaining friends that she knew of, no one left that she could interrogate.

"This isn't a big moment, Kate. This is your moment. You earned it." The little suit sitting across her desk gives a proud sort of shimmy as he interrupts Kate's thoughts, languishing in the self-congratulations of his own cleverness.

Kate swallows the lump in her throat, imagining it lowering as she forces her pen down to the paper in front of her. It takes less than a moment and the thing is finished. Her name, her considered script, is inked forever on the line at the bottom of the page.

"Congratulations Ms. . I can't express how thrilled I am..."

Kate stopped listening. She did her best to polite until she ushered the little suit onto the doorstep and locked the door firmly behind him.

Kate moved up the stairs and made her way to the bookshelf where she had hidden her secret. The aging journal sat like a pit of darkness, waiting amongst the other books until it would strike, and swallow her up without a trace left behind. Hand shaking, Kate pulled the offensive treasure from its hiding place and sunk onto the floor to read it, as she had done so times already.

Without knowing what she was looking for, Kate let the book fall open. This was always the way. The book didn't contain a story, with a beginning and an end, with a hero and a message. This was something else altogether. At times, Kate had found it to instruct like scripture, at others it seemed to conjure as though it were a witch's .

Her first time she had opened to a random page and found a scribble of poetry. clear that the unfamiliar hand that had written it had never finished. At least, the conclusion wasn't included. It seemed as though this was a draft, stream-of-conscious, and as such happened to be unflinchingly honest. The lines had swept her up, held her steady and aloft, momentarily free of her disappointment and grief.

In that moment, she knew this was no ordinary diary. She had flipped to the front, looking for some who had written the poem. She searched cover-to-cover, her eyes raking over the flipping pages for clues. There were none. There wasn't one single signature in the whole of the book.

That first time, the words flowed over her with such a force as though it moved right through her blood. As a result, the words she had been keeping down for so long began to rise up like a tidal wave. What followed were sleepless days and nights when the sound in the house was of Kate's scratching pen or ticking keyboard. She found herself carried away in the stories that burst out of her.

When the fog had lifted Kate felt as though she had woken from a trance. It seemed as if every word she had written herself had come from a stranger. She couldn't accept the of it, that she alone was responsible, that ownership belonged to her. Even when readers who stumbled across these began reaching out, asking for more, for explanations; Kate still didn't truly understand what she had produced. Her memories of the action were blurred, hidden from her recollection. By the time the little suit had approached her with the idea to publish, she was convinced that she had stolen every line from the mysterious, author-less journal. She had forgotten that the words were ever hers in the first place.

Here she was again, sunk onto the floor like a sinner begging for absolution, the book cradled in her lap. She had found herself here so times, demanding answers from the text that had seemingly been to ask questions. Kate clutched the little diary close as though it were a life-raft at sea.

As tears began falling onto the page below, Kate momentarily leaned into her despair. She couldn't fathom the guilt and shame she felt after signing. The doubt that she was worthy, as well as the fear that she would never measure up, that the last weeks of work had been a fluke - all threatening to swallow her up.

Feeling she may be physically sick, Kate forced herself to pause and breathe deeply, , for moments. When she opened her eyes they fell on a new page, one she hadn't yet read. At first, she couldn't take it in. The words before her were ones she knew, but seemed out of place or order somehow.

another poem, not unfamiliar this time, but rather one she knew well. The words were recognizable to her . , her memories thrust her back to the days of her childhood. She was young, and yet she already knew this poem by heart. It's easy to memorize when your father sings it to you every night. Kate remembers giggling as he finished each time, tickled by the way her name stuck out of the rhyme, offensive to the other sounds. Now she knows why.

This poem wasn't written for her. It isn't Kate's poem, anymore than this is Kate's journal. She is neither the author nor the muse, and she feels elated to make this discovery. This love poem could never have belonged to Kate, because for her father.