The Ones She Didn’t Answer (& Why)
Her penmanship’s gone shaky. Every curlicue of capital U and little s
and all of the many many Is are mangled branches of dowsing. Find your way
to the pasture, the girl with the farm boots sloshing through corn.
She’s a brilliant sun that everyone touches, third-degree laid over.
It’s hard to hold the pen in the maelstrom; the letters slip away from the lines.
Every message in this box says the same thing: I loved you. I lost you.
You’re a bitch. Come back to me. She didn’t understand that each turn away
was a papercut in the page of a heart. Now it’s easy to see in every
long-tailed twist of dear, in the march of i i i up the parchment slope of
time and hurt. In the sweet slant of sincerely and yours.
Dear You. Is that formal enough for the future, when you find this
folded in that ribboned box beneath the bed? When I’m the one writing
for the first time I loved you. I lost you. I’m a bitch.
Come back to me.
Sincerely. Yours.
~
ATLAS:
Image taken with iphone while sifting through mementos
Words written while housesitting on the couch
Time Taken under 10 minutes
Brain on the Month of Letters Challenge
Ears on kitties with the crazies