The Novel

By Linda Eve Diamond

I want to write…
…but the pen is so far away…

Across miles of minutia,
snacks, a telephone,
the world outside,
a winding superhighway.

As I binge my time away,
I contemplate my novel—
my navel—

Why the neighbor
mows the lawn at dawn
… and then again at noon.

I imagine the finished novel
discovered one day in its entirety
inside my head and heart
by a coroner.

He’ll find blood rich with story
characters in my capillaries
irony woven through my veins,
plot twists on the matter of my brain.

He will fall in love
with the writer I never was.

He’ll say it was true of me
like so many others he’s seen—
She had a novel inside her.

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