Where Reasons End 02 Waylaid by Days -2

 I was in a subway car. Only a few weeks ago, Nikolai had asked me if it was always this loud underground. We had been on the way to meet my friend, as I was doing today. I can't live in New York, he had said then. I can't afford to lose my hearing.
It occurred to me, when I remembered his words now, that I had never paid attention to the noise. I had known I was not sensitive to colors, but to sounds also?


How have I lived so blindly and deafly? I said. Perhaps he had gained knowledge to explain that to me.
He did not reply. He was eavesdropping on a man and a woman standing next to me. I was late to their story. They were talking about a boy who had killed himself the week before, the son of a mutual acquaintance.
Seventeen, the man said. Can you believe it?
Oh my god, the woman said. I read it in the papers. I thought to myself, Someone's grandson.
Imagine being woken up by that phone call, the man said. How can anyone believe it's real?
I waited for Nikolai to say something. He would not defend the other boy, I knew that. They each had their own reasons to make a decision that looked similar only to those wanting an explanation.
But I wondered if he would say something clever, that people's sympathy and callousness are like two hands wringing over someone else's disaster. Or, would he poke fun at them on my behalf? Of course you knew it was real right away, did you not? he would say.
How can anyone ask a question starting with that silly phrase How can anyone.
But he did not say anything.
Isn't it strange that her first thought was someone's grandson, I said after the man and the woman exited the car.
She just met her first grandchild, Nikolai said.
I had missed that part. We went into the tunnel. I wondered if the noise still bothered him.
I can hear you fine, he said.
Oh, I said. There is one thing that troubles me. I can't find all those poems you wrote.
Or those I will write.
Touché, I said. I then explained that someone had asked if I had enough of his poetry to make a chapbook.
Chap, ChapStick, chapman, chapbook, he said. All sound small to me. Like you're going to make-what did they call it in the old time
—a miniature of my mind.
How I loved that his ambition and conceit would remain as young as he was. They would be handmade, like what you did in bookbinding, I said.
Those notebooks have blank pages.
Not all books have to be blank, I said. Everyone agrees you are a beautiful poet.
Ha, from reading those doodlings I sent you when I was a kid? he said. You don't understand poetry.
You as me, your mother, or you as the world?
You as my mommy, he said. Nikolai might be the only sixteen-year-old to still call his mother Mommy. No offense, but your taste is not to be trusted, he said.
I laughed. He had said the same thing when we had been in a shop in Edinburgh, choosing woolen and cashmere scarves for him.
Those scarves are mine now, I said.
Like pass-me-ups?
You don't mind my wearing them?
I haven't worn them so they're not mine yet. But I do mind, he said, you or anyone reading my poetry.
I told him about an exhibition of Philip Larkin I had seen in England. There were covers of Larkin's journals, the insides taken out and burned in a fireplace the day after his death.
I applaud that as much as you do, Nikolai said.
The key is to have someone you trust agree to live longer, I said But I can't entrust my poetry to anyone, he said.
I thought about the people in the world who would all live longer than he. Would I trust any of them? Would I trust myself?