Pen Pal
Tall grass
slaps and sticks. Up, you know, the sky is ivory. Down
the
indelible hurt of feet. All’s well that ends
in theory.
Melissa, where did you arrive from and how? I could go
poetic and
say your apple cheeks, your humid curls, your filibuster smile and though
these do
describe your effect I have dropped or misplaced or drowned
the words
for wild, my wild tender friend. The road to you is protracted and unmapped.
O the savage
inkloop
of your hand,
your pen like a fever whisper.
I open the envelope (you licked
it) and there your inksong,
your smudgy secrets. Where did I, do I, put
them when I’m done? Your last word is
an
infinitesimal death.
Maybe in the
freezer. I was like that when I was pregnant
with my son:
an absentia so complete and grief-laced as to carry you away, misplaced.
Have I frozen
the words for lost, my sister; sister taken? I trace
the baroque loops,
the stiff black lines
in your lilac-scented
letters. I am your debtor, your loose-limbed dreamer.
I imagine the
babble out your northside window
where egrets
dip for fish. A beaky congregate
of grey-white
feathers beating, I am lost,
beating at
the water. Do you hear their echo?
I am lost. I am lost.
