A few days ago my mother went through all of her notes, postcards, letters, newspapers, and magazines accumulated over several years. She threw away most of it and saved a few precious things. Among her papers she found one of Bob Collén’s postcards addressed to me. I do not remember ever seeing it. It was dated June 10, 1999. A good piece about poetry, too. Today I brought it to my room and searched through a tall pile of his postcards by my writing table in search of its rightful place. There are about four hundred of them. They are all arranged by date of writing in reverse order. They are all oriented the same way. They used to be, that is. To my surprise, many of the cards in the middle of the pile had been turned around. This was a sure sign that Lauren had ferreted through them on one of her visits to Reading. She can never leave things as she has found them. I am sure she was sorely disappointed: not one of Bob’s postcards is about fucking.