On Melancholy

What I thought of as a pleasant lingering
on things,
tender,
without the flurried rush of hope,
Freud called “melancholia”:

“a state in which a person grieves
for a loss she is unable to identify.”

What I experienced
as a general attunement,
wishing only to continue—

a suspended attitude—

Freud described as
“narcissistic identification with the object
that becomes a substitute for the erotic
cathexis.”

And what if, in my case,
there are multiple objects—

whatever appears outside this window—

the dangling threads
of the weeping cypress—

how I would love to make
the elegant, dismissive
gestures
of those long fingers—

beside the white
phone lines, plunging
almost straight down,
or up,
taut,

catching occasional rays of sun,

like a child’s idea
of a message