[spoken: low, intimate, measured; restrained; contemplative rather than dramatic] This dreadful hour— when I shrink to being possible... or rise to mortality. [long pause] If only the morning wouldn't dawn. [longer pause] If only I— and this alcove, and its interior atmosphere where I belong— could all be spiritualized into Night... [slow pause] absolutized into Darkness... [long silence] so that not so much as a shadow of me remain— [voice increasingly quiet and unanchored; do not become emotional] that could taint, with my memory, whatever lived on. [hold silence]
