Wherein the image of towing the safe is meant to be homage. And what the hell: “V”, just because.
Love-Letter Number One
While you watch TV and cross-stitch, quite alone,
I sit to write my first love-letter.
All sharpeners gone, I use my teeth until the pencil's center bleeds.
The paper ends up mottled from my wet strokes,
the pencil soaked and flaccid from my sucking.
I find no stamps in my drawer, just
the Walther pistol you left loaded, safety off,
find an extra cartridge on the floor, just in case.
I place the letter in the iron safe from which our cat escapes
and tow it with tied bed sheets down the hall.
You've gone to bed; you're fast asleep.
So instead I fill your work shoes with the petals of spring blossoms.
Not knowing these are beds for apple worms;
you squish them in the morning as you walk to work.
The old janitor grins his three teeth as he washes your feet
his course hands dipping your toes in his battered mop bucket
water seeps out from under the custodial closet's closed door.
From the cubicles down the hall, typing resounds a dance club hit
causing the windows to vibrate, threatening our poodle-shaved cat
who dangers the ledges, nine floors up.
Realizing his escape from the apartment
I've followed you to work, careful not to be seen,
embarrassed when I realize that you've realized the worms;
I take the elevator while you take the stairs
hoping to beat you up.
Inside I'm held in a velvet bear trap.
Strangers in suits tip-toe to spit on my scalp.
As each leaves on each floor I calculate how long,
in this humidity,
until my hair is dry.
"Going down," the bellman says.
Half-way down I "Open Doors",
I chalk a line upon the wooden wall.
Half-way again, half-way again,
until the chalk disintegrates, and then
until my fingernails are ground away.
We reach the basement where the bellman sets me free.
The warm wet stink of peeled bananas, molding plums, spoilt meat,
and residue of oily cheese, ocean sea, hair spray, and hand cream
make treacherous my walk across the concrete laminate floor;
I tip-toe in my socks, sticking to avoid a fall,
leaving a trail of cotton threading as I go.
The basement stairs lead to a hotel lobby, walls lined
with kinetoscopes, the antique kinds we'd romanticized.
I find you there, too,
checking-in with a taller man
whose felt fedora hides his face.
He sets his forearms on the desk,
and I watch you stroke his under elbows from behind.
Thus you lead him from the desk clerk to the elevator hall,
while he threads the room key through his fingers
fast and faster.
I hope he'll rub the metallic strip away,
but instead it flashes light in each flipping pass,
blinding me like waves on the noon-time sea.
The smell of brine, the roll, the pitch of the ship
is all too much: I flee,
balancing a fragile line upon the baseboards
back to my bed, my abandoned room.
All night I roll in my sheets,
I wake to find myself bound in knots,
that you had returned during the night.
For I had written the one thing I must do,
the one thing I can't know, but know must do,
on Post-It® notes, leaving one in each room.
But each has been erased, or
in the case of ink, embroidered over.
Each of these is signed
with your crimson fingerprint--a testament to your will
and the prophesied apostasy of thimbles.
I'll write that one thing down once more,
eventually, when it falls by,
as a letter to myself, stamped, sealed, and sent
safe until tomorrow's mail arrives.
The first day it comes I see I've addressed it to you,
so I write, "RTS - NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" on the envelope,
and, again, again, at an angle, erect
the carmine mailbox flag.
