They arrive by the sackload from the main office on the Via del Pontiere,
Pouring from the bags as if a torrential weeping,
Envelopes a collage of shapes, a multiplicity of pastel hues,
Some addressed with all the formality of a judicial summons,
Others bearing no more than the name of the distaff half
Of the city’s most famous equation.
They tread upon paths long since worn flat
By any number of their predecessors:
Tales of love unrequited, passion misspent,
Promises untruthful and unmet.
These epistles and their authors
Seek solace of varying degree and efficacy:
Some seek kernels of actual guidance or blessing,
As if some ancient and inscrutable advice columnist
Had taken up residence in the Basilica di San Zeno,
Others looking to self-heal through the catharsis of the act of writing,
Most content to quietly assert to the universe itself
I am here, I am here, I am here.

Where, then, is the corresponding mountain of missives
For the son of the House of Montague?
Surely, his shade would be as kindred a soul
To those which affairs of the heart have left so disheartened,
(Indeed, more so, he most assuredly
The schemer and dreamer of the dramatis personae in question.)
For him, though, no rambling, rumbling truck
Emblazoned with the lemon-cheerful Posteitaliane markings
Arrives at an office chock-a-block with secretaries
Whose mission is to answer and archive its all-but-holy contents;
More likely, there is some humble cart,
(The wheel bearings frozen up, the canvas mildewed and frayed)
Containing a handful of birthday cards
Intended for some Renzo or Romano
Miswritten by some absentminded grandmother or great-aunt,
The odd solicitation or final-notice
Which shall go no further for all of eternity.
Despite the hectoring tone of the envelope
Stating that the material is critically time-sensitive
And intended for the eyes of the addressee only.

Friday
as reminder
of how cruel the time.
(Invariability)
Of how intractable the wind and weather.
(Inevitability)

I cry the cry of the reformed mean spirited;
the once-unholy-then-unholy-again;
the backslid.
It's been so long since I've sinned,
come short of the glory,
come at all (costs)
It would feel good to make a fist again.

Please render me in subtle shades
when you paint me into your masterpiece;
barely discernable from the canvas.
A ghost in achromatic acrylics.

The setting of traps
has always seemed
like a tacit endorsement
of the mice.

Acknowledgement.
Validation.
Admission of failings as a homeowner –
(cracked baseboards or an unsealed gap in the door.)

We are usually responsible
for our own infestations, after all.

The relationship with the mice is codified
“you are vermin,
I am not.
I will ****.
You will die.”

Thus the mice are transfigured,
Christ-like.
Frozen in fear,
frozen in time,
laid bare
on a sticky, chemical
altar of sacrifice.

Saviors
giving their lives
so that we may preserve
those unwanted crumbs
in the vacant space
between the couch and loveseat
where the vacuum won’t reach.