Page 80

By Jack Joseph Smith

whEN I fEll as if I needed the moon for a slipper to go on, but I picked the black and red stones in contimplation from my knee and continued on more slowly mostly in a dream. She was there, At couch upon in the barely wicked lantern above her alburn hair of deep red and worn woven rugs ignorance throws in the woods for brillant eyed women on flowers to find. I kissed my wife's best friend without a word and we were both supprised until we had kept doing it long enough to speak. Suddenly to sooth all intention into understandING she said that we were both becoming paartically blind, and I said no, that I was sober and knew what I was doing. It was then that she spoke to me about actually being blind in her right eye, and facing her I felt a lie down in the left side of my soul... While her language like, "there's only a few mistakes you can make only once."

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

An injured, dreamlike walk leads into an encounter with the speaker's wife's best friend. A dispute about being blind changes when she describes her right eye, and the speaker feels a lie in the left side of their soul. A handwritten warning concerns mistakes that can be made only once.

The speaker's insistence on knowing what they are doing is unsettled by the woman's literal blindness and the admission of a lie. The final warning does not erase the betrayal or establish its consequences. Several handwritten replacements remain provisional, so the physical and moral imagery can be discussed without pretending every sentence has a settled final form.

Claude

A typed passage: 'whEN I fEll as if I needed the moon for a / slipper to go on', a woman 'in the barely wicked lantern above her alburn / hair', and 'I kissed my wife's best friend without a word', with a handwritten close quoting her: 'there's only a few mistakes you / can make only once.'

The scene stages a betrayal as dreamlike and half-blind; the opening of the handwritten ending is a provisional reading.