After Shikujo's Pillow Book Poem by Joan Woodbridge

Things one does when one's lover is away:

- stand in the freezing wind waiting for a bus

- speak with one's therapist

- wander Ninth Avenue seeking small tokens of one's love

- find only two

- wonder about the worth of such tokens

- wonder about one's own worth

- wonder about how one correctly tells another of one's love

- wonder which says more - words or actions
(are not words themselves actions?)

- decide to take a hint from Shikujo

How many ways are there to speak the ineffable?
That's a trick question.