In the Spirit of a Sestina

I was finishing the sixth crossword
                             in under ten minutes,
She looked across the table and said to me,
"You think yourself so clever, don't you?"
And I paused and said, "No, you do."
Her look was one of trying to expunge
                            an unclean spirit.
"If you think a crossword puzzle
                            means anything," I added.

"I challenge you to write a sestina,"
                             she quickly added.
I shot back, "Easy. In how many minutes?"
"Ten," she said in similar spirit
From across the table to me.
I hastily scribbled a few lines down
                            and asked, "Will this do?"
She gave a moment's pause: "You think
                            yourself so clever, don't you?"

Her face dipped like a many layered cake.
                            I said, "No. Do you?"
"You never said write a good one," I added.
She said, "This is what you always do."
History inters the minutes
To a deep, dark coffin. She said,
                            "You always do this to me."
And I realised there was no way
                             to resurrect her spirit.

The weight of expectation crushes even
                             the strongest spirit,
Our own most of all. I asked, then, "Do to you?"
Her hand looked for her breast, "Yes, to me."
"Then why are you here?" I added
A challenge of my own to answer
                            in less than ten minutes.
She said, "Because I want to mean more
                            to you than the words do."

We let silence adjudicate, but we both
                            knew what to do:
Wings broken, you fall with the fallen spirit.
They offer no cushion, the minutes
Move along with or without you.
She never thought her absence could
                            subtract less than it added,
Or be more than the sum of all meaning
                            that words gave to me.

She had challenged all the words
                            I stubbornly used to hide me,
In this I knew there was nothing she could do.
Nothing removed meant nothing added,
All that remains is the spirit
In a heart and mind that will move along
                            with or without you,
To inter history in a deep, dark coffin
                            of minutes.

For words could not have added to
                            the meanings she gave to me.
How can minutes express
                             what years cannot do?
How can your own spirit describe you?

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