The Completist

by Jessica Lévai

Felix Daye was a poet. A master of both formal and free verse, he created intricate maps of the paths of passion through the human heart and mind. He was also dead and had been for fifty-two years when Celia discovered his work in a tattered paperback. She was sixteen years old.

Daye wrote most frequently on the topic of his own loneliness, bemoaning the absence of a perfect companion. “Could words / Worth less than air / Describe her form?” He left such lines like breadcrumbs that such a woman might find him. Those no longer sixteen might roll their eyes, but Celia, who also longed for company and understanding, ate the crumbs hungrily and scratched for more.

Her favorite poet was published but not prolific; profound but not popular. She read his works in garish colors on neglected internet sites, janky for having been summoned from some cache. Though the poems were still the poems, this method of delivery was highly unsatisfying. She preferred her paperback, though as the years went on its binding failed, its corners crumbled, and she feared the void its loss would leave.

She embarked on a quest to procure all of Daye’s published works in print. Research online and letters to far-flung scholars revealed two book collections, one hardcover in addition to the paperback she owned. Twenty-seven other poems saw ink only in magazines and journals, the majority of those long turned from enthusiastic to defunct. But Celia was a completist. It took time, which she had, and money, which she could scrape together. She searched. She offered. She spent most of her free time alone with auction sites or flipping through old catalogs. The jobs she held were merely a means to an end.

Ten years after first discovering Daye’s poetry, Celia completed her collection. She now possessed multiple copies of both books and a stack of magazines of varying size and weight. The ones in pristine condition, which she looked at with a schoolgirl’s shyness, she loved as much as the battered examples sourced from flea markets and yard sales. If Daye’s dying had faded him from the world, here was physical proof that he had existed. The scent of the books was a reminder that he had breathed. It was her only connection to him, and it satisfied her…for a while. Eventually she had to accept that there was nothing more to acquire. What could she do with what she had?

One night Celia returned from work carrying a plastic shopping bag. She assembled the books and journals in a row in front of her and drew her fingers over their covers before taking a small, sharp pair of scissors out of the bag.

Words fell like snow. Sentences curled under the weight of their meaning and import. Whole passages separated from their pages, lying on the floor like planks. There was no sound in the room but the soft snip of the scissors. Then she rustled in the bag again, drawing out a pot of glue and a small, otter-hair brush. The glue soaked into the paper, darkening the words, and carefully she applied them against each other. It was more than a collage, Celia told herself. She would bring him, somehow, into a world that was not flat paper and ink.

She was ritual in her placement. The eyes she formed of his luminous descriptions. The ears were rhyme and tone, the tongue lament and joy. Lines of diffidence were fringed into lashes. She took especial care with the heart, using only those selections that had touched her own the most, twisting the arteries into place, holding it in her hands as the glue dried, peeling it reluctantly from her skin. Whole pages of flesh folded over the heart, keeping it safe (and hidden, but as she knew every corner of it, that was no matter).

The dawn light crept into the room as if afraid to disturb her. It landed on the result of her labor, now clearly the shape of a man, arranged artfully in a chair as if it were merely a guest arrived for an early breakfast. Pink color warmed the paper. Shadows from the trees outside lent the illusion of movement. Of life.

Celia breathed the smell of old ink and glue. She had eyes only for the form in front of her. She stroked its cheek, its hair, a shaggy mane curling here and there as it dried. The work was finished but, like the poet himself, still so empty. That was a sort of triumph, to have captured him so completely, inside and out. She thought of the heart, lonely in the cavity of its chest. Surely her heart, which had followed him for so long, must match.

With no one to see and no one to judge, she leaned over and gave the form the gentlest kiss on the lips.

There was a soft crackling sound. She opened her eyes in shock, fearful that her creation was about to tumble from the chair and crash into the floor. She threw her arms out unthinkingly to catch it. But it remained sitting, still. She calmed her breath and listened. The sound grew louder, rhythmic and steady, from the very center of the sculpture. It spread until finally the lips bent, the mouth worked, and Celia heard one word as clear as anything.

“Paper,” said the form of the poet at her table.

What else could she do? She found a half-used notebook and a ream of copy paper in her desk. She placed them on the table. She also brought him (and the paper person was definitely a “him” now, definitely him) a pen and placed it between the fingers of his right hand. The blue plastic tube looked odd against the off-white surface of the fingers that closed around it, pressed, and adjusted. Soon he was writing. Page after page of the notebook filled with language. He covered every surface, even those that contained her own writing, tearing each page from its wire cage when he was done.

Celia picked up one of the pages and made a face. None of her research had been able to uncover what Daye’s handwriting looked like, though she often imagined it. What was before her didn’t match the elegant loops and whorls of her mind’s eye but was jagged, stabbing, almost painful to decipher. But decipher she did, and each new piece was filled with the same longing as the favorites which once graced her nightstand. If anything, the desperate hunger was stronger than before. She read for hours, only barely keeping up. The last page of the notebook full, Celia opened the ream and he began on that, first writing on the underside of the wrapper. The pen died, but he continued, carving his words without ink.

Celia was lost. “Words worth less than air,” she quoted quietly. “But I’m here.” The poet ignored her, writing feverishly. Her attempt to stop his pen only tore one of his fingers, and she pulled away quickly. He did not pause or answer any of her dwindling attempts to get his attention. She sighed and brought him a new pen, red this time. The pile on the table grew and spilled onto the floor.

The sun went down, taking its warmth. She eventually got up to turn on a lamp, but the poet continued to write. She made a spare dinner and ate it. She did not offer him food. When the dark outside was full her heart was, too, and she grew tired of watching. She curled on the couch to rest for a moment, the rustling and scratching sounds soothing her to sleep.

Celia awoke with the sun in her eyes. She rose from the couch, stretched her tired and tortured joints, and looked upon her creation.

The poetry he had written was gone. Rather, it was transformed. Seated beside him at the table was another figure, this one female. The pen was still, and the pot of glue empty. There was no further need for either.

Celia approached the two and peered closely at her new-formed rival. Ribbons of blue and red formed patterns like veins over the woman’s skin, twining with print where her hand was clasped with his. The paper there was warm beneath Celia’s touch, but this was just a trick of the sun. Anything she felt was an illusion and a passing one at that. The figures were complete, perfect, and empty. Daye would never move, speak, or write again. When Celia removed her hand, the seams binding the shreds began to curl. The glue gave up, and the poet and his companion collapsed into themselves.

Celia took a shower, dressed, and ate her breakfast before sweeping up the pile of scraps. Among them she found only the poet’s heart held together, firm and satisfied. She squeezed it until her knuckles turned white, then dropped it in the wastebasket before heading out into the day.