The first letter, short and sweet and easy,
was written in a casual hand
(like children in the playground passing a ball)
just to say to a friend from long ago,
Hey, how are you, what’s going on?
And I had the letter from him, in response.
The second took more care, more patience,
more thought to frame exactly what I wanted to convey.
I sat a little longer, considering,
making the words casual, soft, slow:
I thought of you today, at dinner;
you really are the greatest poet I have known.
The third I lingered over longer.
I considered and crafted, to make it ideal.
The whole was growing more potent;
also more precarious: as if one word out of place
would make our whole relationship topple.
So perfectly I crafted the letters –
at the same time, full of longing:
I thought of you today. And a thousand things
I have wanted to say to you for long
I will try to convey in these words I write …
The fourth letter took longer still.
Not yet had I said just what I wanted to say.
We did not use that word – so potent
it was in my mind, though; and if in his,
I did not, could never know, I guess,
except to look back on our letters –
letters of longing, letters of luck, letters of –
The fifth letter is yet to be.
Any word more I write to him
would compromise me in my very self.
To say the word I most want to say –
how can I? Is it not obvious to him?
Yet do I have to write exactly that,
exactly what I want to say –
would he not know if it were said in tangents?
If I were to write it,
I know just what I would say.
Yes – this I would say in a letter,
who cannot say it to his face,
and would let the words work there
a few moments, striking a chord
if they may.
But maybe these words are best unsaid.
Maybe it would be too much a risk
to thus lay bare the contents of my heart.
For words become (at some time) actions.
If ever I see him again, my phantom interlocutor,
maybe I will say to him what is felt –
or else go on forever, never spilling, never saying
the love I wanted to convey in those letters.
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