Sun, 12 July

NAMING THE DEAD (OR THE LIVING, IT IS NOT CLEAR WHICH) Private ceremony, Christchurch, winter, 3 a.m. Required: one bare bulb. One sheet of paper, unlined. Two columns — the second begins where the first cannot continue. Lips that move without sound, or with a sound too small for the room to hold. A doorway that remains open not from carelessness but from necessity. The moth, which has not moved in an hour, which will not move. The window, which confirms only that the sky has not changed its mind. The cold that does not announce itself but is present in everything: the paper's faint curl at the corner, the way the hand holds the pen without writing, the particular stillness of a house that is listening. Not required: sleep. Witnesses. An occasion anyone else would name.