MONOLOGUES

by Mark Vinz

Still, her absence fills this house. . .

–Donald Hall

There are so many things I want to tell you. When I come home from errands, I can’t help wondering which room I might find you in, so I can let you know what’s been built or torn down in our old neighborhood.

Look out the window, I find myself saying. The sunset should be brilliant tonight. Let’s go out and chase it in the car, like we used to do—chase it till we finally learn the meaning of last light.

Thanks be for daughters busy sorting through their mother’s clothes and all the other acquisitions of her days— especially books. She read as if her life depended on it, and for a while, it did.

Whenever I take one of them from a bookcase, something usually falls out from between the pages—a folded-up review, a postcard from an old friend, a lovely marker—and I sit down to browse.

As much as I loved her, our tastes were so different, from books to films to rooms. It took us longer than it should to learn what didn’t really matter, that simply being there would always be enough.

Grazing, we used to call it, those nights we didn’t want to cook or even leave the house. See what’s in the Fridge, you’d say, and we’d make do—lettuce, cheese, some fruit, and what was left of bread.

Those were times I’d wonder about the ones we knew who claimed they lived for food. Whatever we invented seemed just right. We ate together, and I lived for you. Now I still stay home but graze alone.

MARK VINZ was born in Rugby, North Dakota, grew up in Minneapolis and the Kansas City area, and attended the universities of Kansas (BA in English 1964, MA in English, 1966, and New Mexico, two additional years of graduate study in English). He is now Professor Emeritus at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he taught in the English department for 39 years and also served as the first (1995-98) coordinator of MSUM’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. His poems, prose poems, stories, and essays, have appeared in over 200 magazines and anthologies and several book-length collections. He was also the mentor for both Deb and Louise.