GRIEF Poem: Pencil in the Margins, by Anabelle Taff

It is the end of June,
and as I am reading
Joan Didion’s The White Album,
I remember that it
has been six months
since I laid flowers

wrapped in brown paper
outside of your office door.
It has been six months
of clicking past PDF
documents you’d shared
with me before December’s

first snowfall. It has been
three months since your
brother let me sift through
your library, and it has been
three months of turning
my head away from the books

I had taken. I manage to read
thirty seven pages of The White Album
before noticing the muted, fading
lines of graphite within the
paragraphs and along the margins;
a small circle around “script.”

My cuticle drags over the pencil
marks. We never discussed the
ethics of writing on a book’s
pages; it’s clear to me that we
would have agreed and clearer
that you are still here with me.