For LM

1. Dear L, it is impossible to prove your existence. I’ve taken on the duties of wiping up: heat, blood, dust. A jeweled beetle paces a leaf in your wake.  Nothing confides.

2.  The deer outside my window has folded haunches, itself a pocket in a wooded landscape. It ducks and tucks itself into new summer ferns, a rust fur envelope.  Why won’t you reply?

3.  (new letter) D, there’s no hunting down L.  like you did the raccoon in your blue fleece bathrobe.  She will simply take two black claw paws and brush down her nose. She’ll look at us through wide bandit eyes and say, aren’t we all thieving at night? Aren’t we all biting stolen property?

4.  Dear L, I suspect you this time.  You have hidden inside the pollen on this damnable picture window with a sliding door. Just as I get my sentences arranged like skirts with a charming back bustle, you hoop them out, make a creak vibrate the pane without shattering glass.  It is not the wind.

5.  Caught! You were the picnic table dappled in shadow – not the raccoon, not the deer, nor even the blue fleece bathrobe. Stop planking at me L, and admit it.  The beach towel folded neatly on one of your corners is no disguise. I stamp this letter with dust, and slip it through your cracks.

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