it will be 1,000% your fault. Why don't you
write? Why make me beg? Are you even
reading these letters? Weren't we happy,
each in our own peculiar way, traversing
that rumpled no-man's-land, the Gobi desert
of our bed? Night of Too Many Bodily Fluids,
can we laugh about that now? And that tussle
in the motel tub when I accidentally knocked
you unconscious? A minor concussion.
Surely you've forgiven me. It's been
several decades. I was loving you so much
this morning, while brushing my teeth
and doing my hair. Remember that
abandoned car we found while hiking
in the middle of nowhere, tufts of grass
sprouting from the radio, gymnastic
acts we performed in its rusted-out chassis?
I'm just trying to depress you (Hah!) How
am I doing? If you don't send me a letter soon,
I'll have to resort to forgery. Your white violets
have prospered and spread. Do you mind if I
go on a while longer? I have so many thoughts
zipping around my head and I'm trying to fit
them all into words that will win you back
and that's why my handwriting rushes
and floods, which is also true of my speech,
chatter that's been known to reach
unintelligible and perhaps irritating-
to-most-people speeds, though I always secretly
believed what I said and meant completely,
sweetly intelligible to you, even when the idea-
content was, well, a bit melted, or had even been run through,
as you liked to quip, one of my several mental
blenders. Remember when you said, after we'd
camped near Crater Lake for a week,
that I looked like the sort of tree one sees
in a dream? I made fun of you all day. Called
you loony. But now, with your tangerine tree,
the one you planted and fed fireplace ash
all its first winter, covered with hummingbirds,
I know exactly what you were trying
to say that precious day. Dearheart: a single
word would be enough to summon me. All else
burns off like fog. I lie vividly awake. Waiting.
[Amy Gerstler, 'Dearest Creature' in Dearest Creature]
I like this one.
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