Devotion

withdrawing from play, comrades and the valley of love, girded with words, a beat outside.

Why do we write? A chorus erupts.

Because we cannot simply live.

Why do I write? My finger, as a stylus, traces the question in the blank air. A familiar riddle posed since youth, withdraw

is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action. And I, time and again, am overcome with the hubris to believe I can answer that call.

The words before me were elegant, blistering. My hands vibrated. Infused with confidence, I had the urge to bolt, mount the stairs, close the heavy door that had been his, sit before my own stack of foolscap, and begin at my own beginning. An act of guiltless sacrilege.

I rested my fingertips on the edge of the last page. Catherine and I looked at one another, not saying a word. I handed her the manuscript, harboring a regret reserved for the end of an affair. I rose from the table, the unfinished violet tea gone cold, the immortelle left behind.

There are stacks of notebooks that speak of years of aborted efforts, deflated euphoria, a relentless pacing of the boards. We must write, engaging in a myriad of struggles, as if breaking in a willful foal. We must write, but not without consistent effort and a measure of sacrifice: to channel the future, to revisit childhood, and to rein in the follies and horrors of the imagination for a pulsating race of readers.

Why is one compelled to write? To set oneself apart, cocooned, rapt in solitude, despite the wants of others.

The qualities that will help you get through life you have received from me. The qualities that will make you welcomed in heaven from your mother.

We would all like to believe that we came from nowhere but ourselves, every gesture is our own. But then we find we belong to the history and fate of a long line of beings that also may have wished to be free.

Having no past we have only present and future.

That is how I became Philadelphia, she wrote later in her journal. Like the city of freedom. Yet I was not free. Hunger is its own warden.

Eugenia stood in silence. She wanted to reach out to her, thank her for all of her sacrifices, but she could not find the right words. Only a swirl of questions that would remain forever unanswered.

—Don’t hate me, I did my best. I am already thirty-two; this is my chance to have something for myself.

As she reached to open the door she stopped and looked at Eugenia in desperation.

—I was born beautiful, she blurted, why should I have an ugly life?

And then she was gone. Like mother and father, like Martin, like the washing on the line.

The stars appeared as if shaken from a net. Eugenia sat beneath them, continuing to reflect. Each star plays its part; each has its own place. Everything I am, she was thinking, has been given to me by nature.