I’ve formulated a hypothesis on the elegance of dreadlocks, dandelions and mailboxes.
I arrive home to heavy wooden door where walls welcome me in yellow and framed art. Now, my mailbox is shaped as a tabletop, no flag or key hole or hollow box containing echoes and spiderwebs. A universal table for each tenant’s envelopes, packages, magazine subscriptions. Before heading up two flights of dark-tree-stained stairs, I search through pile of rectangles searching for you.
Remember the birds? The pea pod. The feathers and wood shavings. Remember the music stuffed deep into the pocket of business sized envelope because you lost all yours and I wanted to send you something more romantic than a sunset: music notes and harmony.
There is a swell of sky in my belly. I am engorged with change, repetition of worry, unclaimed body in need of a devour.
(breath)
I may be having a *secret* love affair with Anne Sexton. I held her up to microphone Monday night. She was slightly heavier than expected. I watched as she crossed one leg over the other as though left knee was the right knee’s lover. And perhaps I should not admit this. Perhaps secrets are meant to climb so deep inside a whisper that sounds become a hissssss. But…..but…
All she could talk on was suicide. Emptiness in walls, which are just slumped trees pressed into poorly postured beams. Oh, Anne. I have loved you for decades. I gathered up enough dandelions to turn this planet blonde, neon lemon scented oceans with daffodil-hued horizons. I even grew my hair long to cover you when we run out of sweaters and sheets. I grew so distracted by your sorrow, though, that my red grew confused, tangled and dreadlocked.
Anne, your lean.
Anne, your clutch of cigarette.
Anne, your need to gargle pills and red lipstick and poems.
I’ve no mail today, nor yesterday but I believe in tomorrow.
I’ll keep you in my throat, Anne.
And I’ll keep that other woman against my sternum.
And I’ll poem my way toward another evening where sun disappears into star formations.
Aimee Herman 