Her Plan

If I should call, the past
might suddenly come back
arranging its feathers,
and there I’d be with only

foreign money in my purse. . . .
I want to die
no more than necessary.
What if I take leave

of my senses and go back
to the nothing-well one last time?
There is, and for everyone,
a final room to enter,

a single room to which
each of us is drawn.
The poet I love best has said,
“Great misfortune simplifies.”

The next poem, a simple voice
of solitude, tells you how to live.