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.