Day 12: Pobject's bookmark

There’s no room for error in the note she’d left:

“Eye drops

Tears Naturale

2 Waters

No snacks

Mechano Pens Black Pilot

Ex. Fine”

Not just any eye drops would do.

I tried to get a picture of the person who wrote the note. Dry-eyed, dutifully dedicated to a strict dietary routine, and very particular about the pens she used.

I pulled the note from where I’d found it, parting pages 108 and 109 of William Carlos Williams’s Selected Poems, sitting between Franklin Square and Breughel’s dancers. How odd, I thought, that someone so regimented (was she not the one who underlined, straightedge in hand, the five full lines on page x?) could find pleasure in this free-flowing verse.

I turned to “To Waken an Old Lady” and slipped the note in there, letting it rest on the snow with the flock of cheeping birds.