She didn't look forward to going out to meet her friend for lunch. It
was two degrees, and wasn't the fire inviting?
She went, though, out of a sense of social duty, out of the knowledge
that she should have friends of her own, out of the memory of a day last
winter, when she had canceled the lunch, because of the cold, because of
the fire. Her friend had not been amused, nor had the friend's co-worker
been amused; abused, perhaps, they had felt abused in the lawyer's
office, where there was no fire, and no lover reading it.
Over lunch they talked about her friend's project, a one-woman play
using only selections of Emily Dickinson's letters. The question of a
title came up: Emily Unplugged; A Taste of Emily (they laughed for the
connotations of it). Papers. Emily's Papers. The friend said, “Vellum”,
and she said, “That's it!” The friend said, “What?” “Vellum, Emily,
that's it, Velemily, something. It's the word, it's the right word, better
than Emily Verso and Recto — Vellum.”
The table erupted into textures. The napkins, suddenly, were thick and
writable. It was a question of the bite of the paper; how lovely it seemed
that paper should have teeth, that Vellum may have the strongest teeth to
go with the sword of a pen. It was better than tongues of fire.
— From The Prose Poem: An International Journal, vol. 8.