Artwork by Autumn Riddle
Letter to Lisbon
I want to buy groceries for you. I take notes,
fried eggs with goat cheese and honey, milk for
the coffee, coffee for the scrub, the list goes on
and I abide. For years now I've marveled
at the ease of your existence, how you live the
good days and the hard ones with amusement.
Your heart is so expansive someone ought to put it
in a museum, the biggest heart in the world,
what a burden that must be! Yet you don't mind—
your universe makes space for laughter whenever you command it.
Remember how our world was once a snowglobe,
small enough to hold and to contemplate? Remember how
we sat beneath the pine trees and pulled time apart
like two halves of an apricot, how we chewed
and spit the seeds out? Do you think we can find
our way back again? Do you think we're still there?
These days I see you and we talk of change, transitions,
how we are becoming new women. We sit on the floor
of your apartment and ask the hard questions. No answer.
The apricots are wilting inside of us and we are not sure
what might grow in their place. But you don't wait to find out.
The music is playing, you remind me, it's begging at your feet
to move your waist again. And you let it, of course you do,
whatever happens I know you will dance your way
through the hours and I will try to follow you. I will try.
