“I type them up for submission,” she said, “but I like to see how they look on the page this way. I taught myself to do calligraphy. I learned from a book. It’s easier than it looks.”

I read:

Bathe her in milk, let the white stream run
Pure in its bovine baptism,
Heal the least schism
Under the soonest sun. Take her
Hand, tell her it doesn’t matter,
Milk’s not to cry over. Scatter
Seed from a silver gun. Break her
Bones in a mortar, shatter
Wine bottles at her feet, let green glass
Sparkle upon her hand. Let it be done.
Let the milk run.
Let it flow down, down to the ancient grass.

I asked if I could copy it into my notebook. Her laugh was light, merry. “Why? Does it tell who killed her?”

“I don’t know what it tells me. Maybe if I keep it I’ll figure out what it tells me.”

“If you figure out what it means,” she said, “I hope you’ll tell me. That’s an exaggeration. I sort of know what I’m getting at. But don’t bother copying it. You can have that copy.”

“Don’t be silly. That’s your copy.”

She shook her head. “It’s not finished. It needs more work. I want to get her eyes into it. If you met Kim you must have noticed her eyes.”

“Yes.”

“I originally wanted to contrast the blue eyes with the green glass, that’s how that image got there in the first place, but the eyes disappeared when I wrote it. I think they were in an earlier draft but somewhere along the line they dropped out.” She smiled. “They were gone in a wink. I’ve got the silver and the green and the white and I left the eyes out.” She stood with her hand on my shoulder, looking down at the poem. “It’s what, twelve lines? I think it should be fourteen anyway. Sonnet length, even if the lines are irregular. I don’t know about schism, either. Maybe an off-rhyme would be better. Spasm, chasm, something.”

She went on, talking more to herself than to me, discussing possible revisions in the poem. “By all means keep that,” she concluded. “It’s a long way from final form. It’s funny. I haven’t even looked at it since she was killed.”

“You wrote it before she was killed?”

“Completely. And I don’t think I ever thought of it as finished, even though I copied it in pen and ink. I’ll do that with drafts. I can get a better idea of what does and doesn’t work that way. I’d have kept on working on this one if she hadn’t been killed.”

“What stopped you? The shock?”