Title: "William Stafford's Ask Me"
Author: Vesper (Regina)
E-mail: vespertanmer@yahoo.com
Warnings: implication of violence
Category: VA
Keywords: Mulder/ Scully married
Summary: In the far future, Scully muses.
Disclaimer: Copyrights held by Chris Carter, 1013 Productions,
20th Century Fox, and William Stafford. I make no profit from
this story.
Archival: If you wish to archive, please link to my website.
Please keep all my headers intact.
Author's notes at the end.

*

Sunny afternoon. Lying on the bank, Mulder's head on my stomach,
watching the river flow. We are married. Long years. I play
with his hair.

"Mulder."

He mumbles sleepily. I can see the blue veins on his eyelids
move, as he dreams.

I speak what the river flows through my mind.

"Sometime when the river is ice, ask me the mistakes I have
made."

The past flashes. Shocking images captured in ice.

He sleeps on.

"Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in
their slow way into my thought."

I stop and Melissa's face smiles at me from the sun's flash off
the water.

"And some have tried to help or to hurt--." A pale face,
wreathed in smoke, eyes open wide, jeweled drops of garnet blood
slipping on the skin.

"Ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made."

Mulder turns over, nuzzling his face into my stomach, and sleeps
on.

"I will listen to what you say." So many times. Habit now.

"You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We
know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and
goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before
us."

The river crackles, forming ice and yet the sun shines hot.
Mulder slowly opens his eyes. Before he knows life, I tell him,
"What the river says, that is what I say."

End.

*

Author's Notes: From Writing Poems, Fourth Edition by Robert
Wallace and Michelle Boisseau (HarperCollins, 1996).

"William Stafford (1914-1993) wrote 'Ask Me' in three drafts....

Here is the finished poem:
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt--ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say."

Scully's voice spoke to me from the lines.