Letters from an Editor

Fourteen: With feathers

B.,

I hope life is kinder to you these days. I hope good things come your way with frequency. I hope you're sleeping at night and not dealing with the monsters in your head, and I hope mornings have stopped suffocating you and instead fill your lungs with fresh air. I hope your second house is a home for you this time, and I hope Shay still brings to your heart the joy and comfort and love that you once upon a time received from me. From both of us.

Thirteen was to you, too, but I've never been able to publish it. I've never felt it was my place to express what's written there. They tell me it's normal, to still care after all this time, to still care despite everything that's passed, but all the same. It's not my right.

All the same. I hope that wind is at your back, now, and I hope that road has risen up to meet you. I hope, for you, everything. Everything and always.

Twelve: Blue Dial

Some days
I feel like that crocodile:

I would swallow this
whole
if I thought it could put you
that
much
closer
to my heart;

tiny gears,
quartz precision in
the form
of a chronograph
and all.

I refrain
and am left to marvel instead:

stainless steel
that radiates
heat?

as though
the tiny thrusts of pulse
while passing from elbow to wrist
had inspired
had invigorated
had breathed life
into its ordinary coolness.

Mornings
I wake still wrapped in winter's chill,

save for that cylinder
(that thin cross-section of forearm,
nestled under the metal's
weight
but remembering
the weight of your
palm, thumb, forefinger,
skin against skin)
complacently basking in
that circle of warmth

with that second hand
ticking
like little heartbeats
or little whispers
of little secrets
in little intervals
carried along
the intricate roadmaps of cuprous blue

until instrument and organ harmonize.
I close my eyes again:

and here
hidden
in the tender darkness of
bedclothes
with the day yet
unborn

here
is your hand
with its warmth
and its weight

here
is the verse
of your song
of your heart

gently guiding
the chorus of mine
from hundreds of miles away.

No half-digested timepiece
could even hope to achieve this proximity.

Those
foolish reptiles.

Eleven: Ezra Pizzle

At eight, I learned a fondness for lemons.
Cut off the tops,
Insert a ribboned stick of candy,
Use it as a straw.
Sweet mingled with the sour.

At fourteen, I walked the decks of a ship
In moonlight with a man who
Smelled of cigarettes, who
Tasted of scotch and whiskey.

At twenty, I stood robed in black,
Cap in one hand, flowers in another.
We stood at the top of the mesa,
Yelling into the canyon that echoed
All our joy.

Now, at twenty-two,
I sleep naked in these hot summer nights.
I rearrange the pillows in my sleep,
And stir in the muted grey overtones of morning
As you run your hand down the curve of my spine.

At twenty-two, I have forgotten the rules
Of cadence and line, of stanza and form.
You chide me, say I move and yawn, stretch like a cat
Without a care in the world.
I reach for the book that was kicked to the floor.
I want to read poems to you, want to feel your fingers in my hair
And I turn my face, craving the sweetness of your kiss, but to find
You have vanished, leaving only the traces of a memory behind,
As vague as the fragrant blossoms of a lemon tree.