this is a love letter.

i leave breadcrumbs everywhere, long trails of them, thinking someday someone will find it, and that will be the one, some one. you've followed all my clues! but they were so obvious, they'll say, i didn't think they were even clues. that's what i thought, too, i will say, and it will be good enough to know someone else has always known, that one thing wasn't for nothing.

if only you were lonely, too.
***
eventually, and sooner than later, the expectation is that you will reply colloquially, you are fine. there is a time, sooner than later, no matter what people have told you they don't mind hearing, they no longer want to hear that you're lousy, that your boyfriend still left you, that your dad is still dead. eventually, it will have happened last month, two months ago, last december, the december before last, and then some years, and some more, and days and months and years can never change the last conversation you had, or the one that you wish that you'd had, and the things you did do and did not do before, and what you have done and have not done since. (i wish i had been nicer. i wish i was not so tired and had stayed up longer and been more patient, always more patient. i did not finish school, i did not have grandchildren, you never met the boyfriend who left me. i've stayed in bed, not sleeping. i've thrown up at karaoke, thinking of you. i've smoked one hundred cigarettes if i've smoked one. ive baked tiny cakes and pet tiny cats, and took tests and read books, and didn't start another band and didn't learn to play the drums or how to speak spanish, and i didn't meet anyone new and now i probably never will, how could i.) but no one else's life stopped because yours did, after all, and everyone's tiny traumas might add up and color themselves and none of this matters, nothing matters, and that's the only thing for sure that i know, and, with twenty-five years behind me, the only thing for sure that's worth knowing.

jamie has been dead for one year exact, and i am haunted still.

in new orleans, i make a wish at a voodoo altar to be perfectly happy, to understand why donna, dead a year almost, visits me in dreams again. there is a dream altar also, but i only have one dollar to spare. i start to think i might be hexed and halfheartedly finger a potion, a talisman, a small bag of bones. i think about d. saying 'not everything is about me,' but everything about me is about me, and maybe i'm hexed, maybe that's my hex.

there are other ghosts, of course. but max is not among them; he's just gone. and now what if?

We.Have.To.Figure.This.Out. but there isn't anything to figure out, and, i disagree: the directionless can move, can sway, can slowly stutter in any direction, not only forward. does forward movement imply progress? does progress imply forward movement? does one inform that you have achieved the other? there are no marks to measure things like these, especially when starting at an indeterminate midpoint with an inconclusive endpoint.

anyway, i am tired, and i love you.

everyone left, and in a whirlwind i was alone again. the bar across the street blasted mrs miller's "a hard day's night" and it stirred every emotion i have ever had, and i wanted to call you to say i was calling you, to say hello, i'm not mad anymore, i'm never really mad at you besides. but the song got cut halfway, and i didnt' know what to do anymore.

pour a glass of wine, continue on and on, & on & on.

quietly listening to tallahassee, window open, box fan on. stretching out in cold breeze in bed alone. sweetly & softly nostalgic.

***
'and there's a stomach churning shift in the way the land lies.'

everything old feels new again & i am settling in nicely; a new cat, a new crush on an old life.