I left the electric bill in the mailbox. Along with one of those Get to Know Your Community at Christ's Church pamphlets.  One where Jesus sits holding a sheep, and oriental kids sit criss-crossed and apple-sauced at his feet. An advertisement for Great Wall Chinese food rounded out the lineup. How many trashcans must be filled?

But your letter, a mini-salvation at the sight of your name alone, came with me. My octogenarian neighbor with the heavy jowls and purple hair watched me rummage through the mail as her leashed shih tzu ****** in my yard.  Good morning. A nod. No response from my neighbor like usual. She's hardly a neighbor. More like a cop that directs traffic just past her property onto mine so traffic can **** my grass.  The shih tzu, though, that thing quaked as if I might give it a hard kick in the ribs. A satisfying thought.

My great pleasure dissipated when I opened your letter. Don't worry about Tim. I know he cares about you. He'd be an idiot not to. These are things I'm supposed to say. The sad truth being that Tim is a man. And like the rest of us, he's cheating on you. Probably with a thinner woman. A model that still subscribes to ****** chic. Or at least ******.

Before you take a kitchen knife to one of his neglected polos, make sure he's okay. Bizarre advice, I know. My mind only wandered when I did't feel like I was worth a million bucks. You always made me feel like two million. So, I'm sure it's something on his end.

Pour the whiskey until he opens up like one of those cashiers you make the mistake of acknowledging when they've been on the clock for five hours and still got three to go. He'll tell you about the baby he can't feed, the gonorrhea feasting on his urethra, and the titanic loan he took out from mama looming over his head. After he's said his piece, his load will lighten. The clouds will part. Fingers crossed.

The way you described his despondent behavior sounds like the lurking grey of bad luck. A black cat. I'm reminded of the time in my beat-up Cavalier when a black cat began to cross the street in front of us over on 86th and Western. Do you remember that? You have to. I cursed the bad luck. Then my curse seemed to stop the stupid beast in the middle of the lane. He looked straight at me. The headlights reflected off his eyes, and you grabbed the wheel. Turned it right into the cat. "I **** my bad luck," you said as the cat's end was confirmed with a thump. Then you said something like if they don't cross your path completely, it doesn't count. Find the bad luck before it snickers from the other side.

South Maine
the white beaches of Ogunquit
where the tide shrinks the shoreline
where the mud is made new
Lucy corkscrews her toes
digging deeper and deeper
What are you doing sweetheart
though she's my niece I pretend she's my daughter
I want to hit bottom so I can climb to the top
though she's four she's wiser than me
squawking seagulls float above
an orange glow seeps off the edge of the clouds
as they hustle west
Josh
Yes
Is the ocean forever
Of course I say as a wave washes her feet clean
*I wish we were oceans

Strange to be a few barstools down from you at O'Brien's. Yet, a decade away from you in time. Tim is handsome. I doubt that means anything coming from me, but I didn't exactly talk to him. Not much else I can say. You're still out of his league. Always dating down. Thank you.

When Tim went to the bathroom, I wanted to cut through the smoke and tell you I love you. Not in a gesture of romance. Not in an act of heartbreaking bravery. Really just to say it. I haven't said it to anyone in such a long time. I love you.

Before I saw you, I went to visit my sister at the hospital. Jessica switched to the night shift last week. She gets the pleasure of telling cranky old men no more Vicodin, and in act of mercy, God grants her a week of sunrises to be viewed from the wide windows of the 13th floor.

The nurse tending the desk told me Jess was making the rounds. I creeped into four or five dark rooms before I found her. Might've even woken a bald woman in an iron lung. Do they make iron lungs anymore? Looked like an iron lung.

Anyways, I found her in a room grabbing a meal tray and putting on its "kosher" lid to be trashed. "Hey, man. Henri, this is my brother Josh. Josh this is Henri," Jess introduced. I shook his hand.

He looked up at me through black, thick-framed glasses. Henri had one silvery capped tooth that became visible when he smiled. The smile crumpled and wrinkled his face like an old newspaper.

"If you want you can just stay in here," my sister said. "Henri's a cool guy and I need to go grab his sleeping medication."

I told her sure. Sat down next to Henri. He looked to be in his early sixties. Very lean. Sharp jaw. Large knuckles. If he ever stepped in a ring, I bet he made a hell of a fighter.

Henri removed his glasses. Placed them in his lap next to a collection of Chekov stories.  I told him I really liked Russian literature. No matter a person's class they always seem to have servants. A butler to tell them their molding slice of bread was ready, and a maid to serve it.

"I feel just as lucky. Your sister has treated me like I just walked in from Hollywood Boulevard." I asked him what he was in for -- like it was prison.

"Fractured hip. The most cliche of old-timer injuries. Not proud of it," he laughed softly. "I have been biking across the country and a little white sedan didn't take much notice of me -- well, until after they hit me."

****. I asked why he was making the journey. His wife died in the summer. His life stopped. "Life is measured in the stops," he told me. "When your job, your hobbies, sometimes even your friends all become irrelevant and time doesn't matter -- you've stopped. I locked myself in our house for a month. Told the kids I didn't want them to visit. I got the best woman on the planet. I don't feel guilty for taking her. Because believe me, I had to earn her," he looked to the side for a moment. Staring at the black television screen.

Then he told me that life may be measured in stops, but greatness is measured in starts. Journeys. I thought you'd like that, Ms. Anna. Henri then asked me that terrible question, "got a wife?" as if to make sure the conversation didn't center on him.

I told him I had gotten a divorce three years ago. He asked if I had moved on. I confessed, I've hobbled. His heavy brow grew heavier. His hands pulled the bed table to the middle. He asked me to hand him a pen off the dresser. He uncapped it. "What year were you born?" 1986.

"Okay, and you were divorced in 2009?" Yep. "And you haven't started over?" Nope. Henri wrote something on the napkin and pushed the bed table to me. With a shiver, a weight passed through me -- going upwards. The napkin read,

"Josh
1986-2009, 2012-"

"Don't waste three years of your life again."

I only went to the hospital because Jess has a friend she wanted to introduce me to. Her name is Macie, I think. Macie called in sick. I'll call it a fair trade. I've written too much again. I hope you read this late at night, and when you awake, I hope the coffee tastes new. Your newspaper isn't wet with rain. I hope your journey starts or restarts. You deserve the same unknown energy that seems to be coming from under the concrete.

cleaning up the mess of documents
on my hard drive
I find one titled
"secret message"
double-click
it reads
"i love you."


wish they'd signed it

I know that isn't how my grandmother would want me to remember her. Hell, the last time you saw me, I was fifteen pounds heavier, unkempt, and I was wearing that awful, low cut v-neck that made my chest appear a bit too supple. Wish you didn't remember me that way. But you do. But I do. You can't redact the past. Believe me. I used up every black marker in Oklahoma County trying.

You're dating a chef. By your lovely description, I could see the tendrils of spiraling capellini. Smell the buttered ciabatta. Were there candles? Did you whisper over the wine glasses? I hope there were candles. Cinnamon candles.

I actually cooked last night. Cajun tilapia and wild rice. Easing back into it. I've been living off canned vegetables for two months. Peas and carrots mostly. I'm going to assume if you and I shared this conversation in person, at this juncture you would whisper over wine glass, what was the occasion?

Heather called last night. The dancer. She needed a place to sleep. I guess her Craigslist roommates, those two shifty-eyed boys from Nevada, bailed on the 30th of September and the rent came due on the first of October. She hadn't paid it. Evicted. For a night, my room was adorned in all manner of frilly things and five pairs of heels. She left everything else in her car. She explained the decorations as proof of employment.

Don't worry. I didn't go there. Though, she thought I would too. After staring over her head at the beige wall behind her for two hours with my *** hanging off my twin-sized bed -- her lying in the middle -- I tried to move her to the east. She took it as an advance. "I'm not on birth control and I don't want a relationship," she said. Are any soft women left?

Eve, may you leave the skeletons of snakes behind.
May 8 o'clock come before 9,
and despite a promise to yourself to wait,
start pouring the wine and write.
Write eloquent, hallucinogenic, and as the wine chimes in --
laugh as you catch the words growing larger on the page.

Eve, may the wind crawl in, rustling the blinds.
May the paint on your latest oil dry,
and when the relevant kids ask you what it means,
tell them you're just happy to be here,
and daydream of being carried by the cradling wind into the amethyst sky.

Eve, may your memory serve to keep the delicate moments stored.
May you recite the holy luck and beauty of each calendar page,
as a 4-year-old recites an entire storybook
her gentle mother has read and re-read to her.
May you sleep like that child in the comfort of fervent love.

Eve, may you dream beyond the cosmos, beyond God's heaven.
May you find rest in your own empyrean visions.
Let the beasts of the field and the birds of the air take on new names --
the monikers you choose -- let the the writhing oaks and the monuments of man
bow in a celebration of your quiet grace.

And Eve, when you wake, may you wake like a giant.
May you be 60-feet tall and still in awe of all you see,
incapable of escaping the grandeur -- indulgent only in empathy.
May the sons and daughters of this sphere raise hymns.
May the sons and daughters of this sphere find only solace in your shadow.

Eve, may you take another notice of me.
May you tell me apart from Adam, Alan, or Allah.
The rib you returned -- I never wanted back.
So, when the calendar runs out of pages, I pray the past is past.
In an act of divine forgiveness, I exit counting you as a friend.

I brought her one flower
from the cemetery I borrowed
love leads to death
but it can work the other way
so the blackbird on the telephone wire say
I brought her one flower
a bouquet -- wasteful, sour
too many kisses cheapen
how else to pay by the hour
so the meadowlark's **** showers
I brought her one flower
in a corduroy suit, sunglassed tower
a corkscrew and 12 apostles
too far from shore, too young to cry
so the stupid penguin tries to fly
I brought her one flower
in some water, a tired bower
"I didn't try my hardest."
"I know." Wish my *** to the moon
So the robin lets out a morose croon