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I got to go to Emily
Dickinson's house in Amherst

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a few years ago.

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And the man taking me around and
led me into her bedroom study,

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and then reached
into the closet,

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and totally threw me back
on my heels by handing me

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the white dress she had worn.

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This is called, The
Mystery of Emily Dickinson.

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It starts there, and goes back
to Iowa City, where I live.

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Sometimes the weather
goes on for days.

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But you were different.

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You were divine.

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While the others
wrote more and longer,

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you wrote much more
and much shorter.

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I held your white dress once--

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12 buttons.

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In the cupola, the
wasp struck glass

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as hard to escape as
you hit your sound again

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and again asking,
welcome no one.

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Except for you,
it were a trifle.

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This morning, not much after
dawn in level country--

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not New England's-- through
leftovers of summer rain,

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I went out rag-tag to the curb.

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Only a sleepy householder
at his routine,

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bending to trash, when a
young girl in a white dress

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your size passed.

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So softly-- carrying her shoes.

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It must be she surprised me.

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Her barefoot quickstep and
the earliness of the hour--

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your dress.

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Or surely I'd have
spoken of it sooner.

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I should have called
to her, but a neighbor

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wore that look you
see against happiness.

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I won't say anything
would have happened--

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unless there was time
and eternity's plenty.