(excerpt from a love letter) 2/15/2015

(excerpt from a love letter) 2/15/2015

There was something I wanted to tell you, something on my tongue like
ghost peppers and nutmeg; I wanted to ask you where all the deer went
in hunting season, whether they can see all the safety orange and know
to stay off the roads; I wanted to ask you if you can feel how we're all
pierced by starlight and how there are miles of asphalt run under our palms
as we grow older; there was something important that I meant to write down,
some perfect words that were like an incantation for beauty, that I wanted
to roll around in my mouth for a while and share with you, I wanted to make
music with you but my fingers are blunt and stubborn (I broke the middle
one, you remember? It looks like a lightning rod now, like the tip is on
sideways, like oak trees look in the winter when they're naked, remember?)
I meant to write something down for you, a slip of paper with the password
so I'd recognize you when you come home and my mind is fuzzy from being
elsewhere (not that I stop knowing you when I go, I am just less me every
time I come back, you see) I meant to leave this chair today, I meant to
do something important but I forgot what the word was; I wanted to tell you
about how it's only wonderful when you drive me places, how I wouldn't
trust anyone else quite as completely in my shitty car (even though you
talk with your hands when you're excited and we stagger between lanes and
laugh when we're silent, remember?); I wanted to remember how the sky
seems to pool in blue holes over the flat places in Michigan like it
remembers at night how hay fields look stubbled in lopseed each summer.