𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐈𝐄'𝐒 𝐅𝐀𝐑𝐌 . bob dylan

𝑽𝑰𝑰𝑰.

JANUARY 5

"Magda. Please read me something, and not those silly crime reports." Bob said, taking the spot next to her on the floor. "Something profound."

Maggie looked at Bobby for a little while, then began to flip through her manila folder of writings. Sheets of crumpled notebook paper, clean and typed pages, little yellow torn pages.

"Just read one you like, Mag, please." Bob said. He wasn't annoyed, but he wanted her to stop being so ridiculous about her writing. He'd read her good stuff–the stuff she wrote when she was really struck with a sudden urge to think–and he was sure she could be as famous as Queen Elizabeth if she just stopped being so meek about her marvelous material.

She breathed heavily through her nose, looking up at him through her eyebrows. He smiled, "How many times do I have to tell you, I won't laugh unless it's about me, so read Mag, read!"

"Okay, okay," she muttered, sighing again. "Sitting in their birch Justice benches, the men all have carefully bent hands, hiding the very tips of their fingers. The photographers, too, know to void from their fists. The men who say what's final, the men who decide who is wrong and who is right. Decide who we can have direct us, and who should be sent off to be analyzed by the other men with just the same fingers. The hands they use to guide the lesser people–the minorities and the kooks and the free-thinkers–sign pages and pages of nerve-replacing documents. And unknown to us, only seeing the effects of the men's hands, we have been misdirected. For on their fingertips is black, stained, muck."

Magda placed the paper down on the coffee table and turned her head away from Bobby. "Why do you get so worried about it? I think you're writing should not make anyone worrisome."

Bobby took her chin with his knuckle and his thumb, and made her look at him. Her brownish-green eyes didn't blink as she looked at him. Her face was a little warm, and she was biting the inside of her cheek. Bobby said nothing to her, only kissing underneath her eye.

"When I met you, you were the most fearless girl I'd ever seen. And you moved in with me, and it seems like you've slunk away, that confidence has sort of disappeared. I know you know what I mean, Mag."

Magda looked at him, and then back down at her papers. "I was...fearless because of the alcohol coursing through my veins." She was speaking at him in her poetic voice. She donned it when she was a little drowsy or a little hungry, or her feelings were a little hurt. "The affect it had on my head is what made me confident, Bob. I was looking for love in everything I did, and I could never find it, so I drank. I forced myself to be a greater person than I was. When I met you, and you brought me flowers, and we moved in together, I didn't think I needed to make myself big anymore. You know?"

Bob looked at her, nodding. Magda only continued. "Alcohol ruins people, so I stopped, whether I became small or stayed big."

"I love you, Magda, but you got small."