Letters to Brenda

1

I’m so alone and sad and away.

We said we’d write so here

goes. As if, addressed

to you from this distance,

I could reveal something neither

of us knows when we’re side by

side by side. As if love were

the frame that reveals the two

people in it. I like that:

“as if,” which is making a

statement by taking it back.

2

It’s hard to do anything when

there’s no need: the leaves won’t

go brown in spring if I don’t write.

Will you weep if I leave

the blank page blank? I’m nervous

I’ll say the right thing the wrong

way. But here I am, the long

white road before me. I envision

you at the end of it, period.

3

Should a love letter reveal

the lover to the beloved?

Should it recall me to you,

send me your way without

my having to leave where I am?

Or should it deliver you here,

my longing wrapping your shape,

your soft smooth skin and your

surprisingly long fingers in

the text where anyone can see

you and feel you as I do? We should

meet here, pulling these lines

over our bodies like a cool

sheet, cozy under the reader’s gaze.

4

When I die I’ll want you by my

bedside to hold my hand. Life

lasted decades and we outlived

our losses, never a good match but

no one else could have lived this.

I’ll want to die first so you

can do this for me, though you’ll

want to die first too. It’s not

selfish to want to be said goodbye

to. Let’s not argue. Let’s both die

first together, each of us sitting

by each other’s bedside where we

each lay gently expiring, explaining.

5

Imagine this is the surface

of a rippling pond—we are not

dying in this one—and you look

down and see my face where

your reflection should be. Would you

assume, then, that looking up

I see you instead of myself?

Love asks questions like this

with no hope of an answer.

6

We’ve promised to talk on the

phone—I am longing for your

voice as if it could hold me.

But what if one of us is not

in the mood? What if there’s

nothing to say? It’s easy

to feel like the other is

merely in the way. I’d be able

to hear the anger in your eyes.

7

Maybe it’s generosity that lets us

each see the other instead of ourselves

in the pool: could I bear how I must

sometimes look to you, when I’m

angry or childish? Or, worse,

when you feel the full bloom

of your love for me—could I lock

eyes with the person you’re

seeing then? I’m no match for him.

8

If I could slip you into my skin

and step out, for just a minute, let you

look out from behind my eyes, watch my

thoughts spinning inside your head,

let you feel the weight of my limbs

and my chest and my gut pulling down,

heavy with my little burdens, or rarer, lifting

upward with inner light, you’d have

everything you’d need to forgive me

and you and everyone everything.

9

It’s been raining here all day.

Gray fills my insides like sleep.

I crave sunlight through leaves, which

promises its own faraway origin,

where beauty isn’t surprising.

I don’t want to spend my life

tiptoeing toward the next.

10

Words try to promise meaning

beyond what they say, as though

each one were a step on a path

to a distant outpost where, on a

wooden table, the final, simple

answer has been ruggedly carved.

Having gone there and attained

that knowledge, of course, one

can never come back, which is why

all writing must be imprecise,

so that we don’t have to

leave each other, ever, my lover.