Thu, 19 May 2005

Tethering Clouds
This was in the winter, when the sidewalks were all iced and a walk to the mailbox involved enough bruises and bone-cracks to make me stop half-bundled and content myself to watch the nature channel. Eventually, however, curiosity and boredom would win out and I’d inch along to the post, looking out for my mailman, the only mailman with FOOD NOT BOMBS stickers on his truck, making him easy to spot. There was a letter with handwritten addresses on the front and snow-smeared words along the back flap, which got my attention, and so I opened it at the box.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to tell you, but I can’t put this off any longer”, it began, in script I couldn’t identify and paper out of character with anyone I knew. I won’t continue the text here, for personal reasons, but in essence it was a love letter, a proclamation of affection and promise of touch. This was completely unexpected, and I found myself rushing across the pages to discover who would have written me such a thing. The handwriting grew longer and looser as the letter progressed, as intimacies were breached, and pieces of my heart began to open until I got to a word: “Stuart”. I went back and over, and over again. “Stuart”. This letter was not for me.

A closer examination of the letter showed the rightful owner as the previous inhabitant of the duplex, who had run off without paying back rent and (thus) without leaving a forwarding address. I sat there for a while, listening to the wind form and sculpt dunes from the plow-pushed streetside drifts, listening to icicles crack and shatter. There’s a quiet you only really know when it’s below freezing, when the chill’s run you through, frost dusting your nose and lungs. After a while, I went back inside, sat down, and watched some nature channel. I got more of these letters through the month, and I opened them to the last. This woman waited on a response, begged for a response, made accusations and threw insults. I thought of replying, but she’d then know I’d been reading the mail. I then thought of pretending to be this Stuart, but the ache of this made me so sad I almost started drinking again.

Eventually the letters grew shorter, drying up and shriveling. Finally, a month before the first thaw, the last one arrived. She’d reached a form of acceptance and forgiveness. She’d also met someone, an organ player at a local church who was a master griller and owned his own boat. I still have all those letters, in a box I keep in my closet, though I try not to take them out very often, because every time I do, I find myself pretending those letters had been written for me.
(12:06.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #