a dictionary not of words but of things she meant by them: kettle, ribbon, the kind of silence one keeps for a guest. she ordered them alphabetically. she began with aftermath. she finished, after twelve years, with custodian.
d through z are blank index cards in twenty-three quiet drawers in the oak box on the desk. she opens them sometimes — the drawer for h, the drawer for w — and stands a moment with her hand on the wood. the words she has not yet defined wait, she thinks, with a certain politeness, for her to be ready.
she is no longer entirely sure what some of the entries mean. the card for bell sends one to the card for ceremony, which sends one to the card for afternoon, which is in a drawer she has not yet opened. the cross-references, she finds, are now older than the words they point to.