|
Got your letter, very clever. You misspelled my name again, this time on purpose leaving no return address, no room to move: the first envelope since my departure. It traveled halfway cross-country, tailing me like an unmarked car through eastern Washington deserts, a piece of Idaho, bleak Montana stretches and the Black Hills. In Iowa, I recognized your hand at the wheel with those Bic-blue kisses on the seal XXX--your version of the frequent flyer: correspondence as passenger, racking up another mile of words. But you’d acted like there was that much between us long before I left.Passing notes and passing out in that damp Seattle bar. We slid a cocktail napkin, bloodied with ink, black and forth across the table’s radius, stabbing at each other with a felt tip, gin and tonic and I forget, but we did go home together, didn’t we? Eyes stinging, ears ringing, we unwound to sleep the way only friends do: touching, preferring to pretend it was cold and one of us was giving the other a break. B-SideSorry I’ve waited so long and now all I do is write you, but it’s too late: I’m in Texas, you’re overseas. Our differences are well defined by lines. Table tops have become time zones, and you think fourteen hours in advance that no matter what I do, yesterday and today won’t combine in me or you. Yet, we keep writing. Tomorrow’s episode: you’re letting your hair grow, learning to smoke and behave like a lady. Dress to impress just to undress, that’s depressing. There’s no telling what will happen next. I’m about to turn us into another John Hughes production, call it a gut reaction. You be Molly Ringwald and I’ll keep coating us with these sweet half-truths (a thin white film that goes down smooth and gives you more of what you want in me): an unkind security, action-packed emptiness and the dry heaves. I picture you picturing me, bent at the waste trying to edit the irony of depth: a baby can drown in just three inches of bath water, but you know it’s not just love that I feel for you, it’s a song. Your letters the lyrics; my response, six strings moving closer to their amp.This page is our voice mail and I’m adding three more chords to the paper trail of feedback. Or haven’t you heard? A diamond is forever/It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'/You deserve a break today/Just do it/Own the road/It’s Miller time/Hear the difference/Pop has freed us. Jared Leising Jared teachs English at Green River Community College and received his MFA from the University of Houston in 1998. He has a fiction forthcoming from the Oyster Boy Review and Missing Spoke Press. 
|
