I just wrote the final scene of my novel. My active novel, not the three that are ... on hiatus.
Death has come. While it came to the person I expected, it wasn't in the form I expected. It shocked me. Part of me bled for this virtual brother, dark soul though he was.
The novel as a whole, though, isn't done, not by a long shot. There's much to rework, especially now. With the end in the box, I know for the first time, who these characters absolutely are, the two main characters, anyway.
There's also plenty to fill in, experiences that are inherent to the end, but only implicit, if at all, in the rest of the text. Then there's the trimming and shaping.
(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)
Whatever happens with us, your body
will haunt mine—tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come—
the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there—
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth—
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting for years for you
in my rose-wet cave—whatever happens, this is.
And yet one arrives somehow,
finds himself loosening the hooks of
her dress
in a strange bedroom—
feels the autumn
dropping its silk and linen leaves
about her ankles.
The tawdry veined body emerges
twisted upon itself
like a winter wind . . . !
