#maybethatwasit

[mtwi]

Something stirs in the idle night, in this idle mind viewed outside itself

[mtwi]

Letters

Dear X,

          Change descends and settles upon us. Now, no longer clothed in bitterness: torn away to make room for the new. And only when you go to speak as you used to, long ago, do you notice the seismic shifts that deny you the house you grew up in, and all the reel from your morphed mind. Shaped by fragile chemicals that fall like snowflakes to your feet. A hellish year has passed for you; no longer what it was--it’s over, yes--you open the door and begin the repetition. 

               Yours,

[mtwi]

mtwi

--Barreling towards the buried family whispers, barren nights encapsulated in memory full dreary that what should be forgotten, struck, will be like in stone. There will always be room to remember, always space for the retry; new writing of new sound bending in the sweet direction they never suspected. 

[mtwi]

mtwi

--The scene is to stand in the crude season-light; amid the limbs shorn of leaves as an Earth’s antlers to buck the mend we are on. Yellow and white eat away the gray; move in stages, move to the stage in a life like limbs in a play on words on the Earth. Your footsteps are many mirrors deep, your body to bodies all in repetition and thoughtless thought. Prop up the lifeless thing so that it may be alive; open-and-close the eyes with a tear where appropriate and a half-fake-smile to ease the tension. Walk it among the rest who will ignore it, who are just like it.

[mtwi]

Letters

Dear X,

            You arrive without form, no face with which to speak: only my own. And there are no words, only a stillness, only a shame. I seek, you know, that which matches what I am now, what this is. I want to find the thing in the world that possesses symmetry with me. I want to hear it; I want to read it and see it and all the rest. I want to know that I am a part and that whatever isolation there is may not always be. Always I write you, though I do not know if you are there. I don’t know who you are. You could be me. On the cusp of collapse I welcome you fresh from the cold; we are dark and we are light--we realize our devastations and burn in the ecstatic joy when it lands upon us. This is who we are.

         Yours,

[mtwi]

LETTERS

Dear X, 

            The painful progression: conversation always effortless turned forced, strained and distant, cut through the beginning and facing the end. There is no less meaning now than always before--there will always be such meaning, such a collection of images and words in places. Many lives built up and lived. In time we fade, we return--in the pattern we seek to find no pattern, the work is ours, the failures are ours. In our silence; in our distance. Anything can be changed--though we like hostile nations stand eye-to-eye at the borderline barren of compromise. And so we each hold our quiet devastation; we keep it from one another. And we would never know what importance the other held, unless we say it. I am saying it.

                 Yours,           

[mtwi]

Letters

Dear X,

             This is a drop seeping away, escaping from the rest to be discovered. And here you’ve come, we are separated by so much, and here you are. There is unknown; there will always be unknown. The sun is gone, I am surrounded by darkness--perhaps so you can have some light for a little while. And that’s ok. That’s how it works. I spend so much time watching, watching like I am life’s camera. I am a device with a hang-up, with devices that hold onto things before  abstract moving images tightly held are at last gone. I am alone in the surrounding darkness, though for a few seconds here you are, here you are.

                    Yours,

[mtwi]

Letters

Dear X,

           I send this like a loop of time, beyond what I’ve become sat stagnant. Do you understand? Deep breaths are not what they used to be, I learn each day of missing feelings, feelings I recall from ever-further years--from the times with only the cool grass and twilight as I ran. As I ran onto the runway and launched. Life became less of an abstraction. Except for here; except for this. What does one do with a broken imagination? Beaten down, worn away, dead behind the eyes. Perpetually surrendering to tiredness. In each endeavor  the moment you discover your failure, knowing in this I will go no further. In this I do not sustain those fond feelings, do not create them anew--no; all that is left for me now is to remember.

                  Yours,