viii. steve almond

dear steve almond,

you don't know me, but i saw you recently at a reading. the somerville writers' festival was held about a month ago, and you read quickly and then had to leave because your wife was about to go into labor. if i were her, i would be mad you agreed to read at the festival too. but that's not why i'm writing. i was moved by your letter excerpts*, as most were funny, others heartrendingly poignant, and all echoed something i might write myself, which i found most intriguing. so i went to the library, which you will be pleased to know has ALL of your books. and to think i'd never even heard of you. i selected "not that you asked," your book of personal essays, because that's what i like to write, and i hoped it might contain some of the letters you read. it didn't, but i was moved by your homage to vonnegut. i wonder if there's a writer who has had that amount of influence in my life: perhaps lisa carver, whom i have met, or cornel west and wendell berry, whom i have heard speak, or otherwise only the deceased--flannery o'connor, hannah arendt, peter kropotkin, thomas merton, salinger (who, alright, is not dead, but equally inaccessible). i made a zine once and used quotes from vonnegut, who was a fighter until the end. so, unlike you, i do not have grandparents who were communists, but i do come from good country people, and find that i am equally concerned with freedom and truth. so thanks for your words (your essay on the multiple deaths of josephine made me laugh out loud) and keep writing, and reading, and i hope you find another teaching post. you've got two babies to care for now.

sincerely,
ann crews melton

*for the inquisitive reader: steve almond resigned from boston college when they invited condoleezza rice to speak at commencement, after which he received hundreds of emails from right-wing nut jobs, to which he responded publicly at the reading. they included lots of references to his balls, and condi's balls, and hellfire, and expletives unfit to reproduce here.

vii. warmth

it begins as a searing point of light. as the coils tighten their tender fingers around the dark matter, i can no longer see. still, i sense the dark wings fluttering, carrying their echoes of anxiety, abandoned responsibility, thin air, and stunted growth. i cringe at the mournful chiming of the christmas bells. gifts, well-intended, lie leaden on my chest and strain my brittle fingers. the one i love lifts me from the gloom for but awhile, but then we argue, stutter and regret displaced cruel words.

it doesn't have to be like this. the cold does not comfort, the fireplace echoes emptily in the chill dark. the shadows of cattle and wildlife stare back from the night, their cold enormous eyes barely illuminated by the superficial exterior bulbs, lining roofs and warding off strangers. at this time, and always, it is only the familiar we hold dear.

and what of the light, that pinpoint gripping, searing, severing and stifling thoughts and stillborn kind words? the shards reach eyelids, cheekbone, neck, twisting in severity with the clanging of the bells. this pain is inherited. i carry it with the weight of our women, the coming heaviness and tears of childbirth, the pin pricks turned to burning prods that acknowledge no origin. they, as my body, have always been a part of me. i long for wholeness and reconciliation, not release. i can no more escape the pinpricks of light than i can cease to exist. the tendrils keep their grip firmly, unyielding. i try to breathe, eyes closed, seeing nothing, but feeling for the first time a gentle warmth near my hand. i hold hands with it and do not move, do not speak, as a single tear rolls toward my pillow.

vi. sidewalks

this morning i sloshed through the muddled streets of boston, where filth and oil and rainwater rolled down like an everflowing stream. my toes escaped unscathed, thanks to salt-ridden boots, and beneath my black umbrella i dodged the gazes of the curious and the disenfranchised. stepping precisely around cigarette butts, wayward candy wrappers and dunkin' donuts "happy holiddays" cups, i jetéd over the swirls of muck accumulating at each curb. my feet hurried forward without a clear path, touching no one.

i think of the trails i have traversed, from the path through the hedgerow that led to tesco's, me in vegan steel-toed boots with a backpack anticipating soy yogurt, dry pasta and a boldly labelled bottle marked "vodka." a lost wes anderson prop. we tromped together over the dying november grass, down a mile of sidewalk that passed the graffiti wrought by dave's eager hand. later the boots would carry me through the streets of newcastle and london, calling for bush and blair to consider the children who were not their own; who might in fact belong to no one.

there was no sidewalk in benares. the streets, full of cow manure, trampled marigolds and human excrement, quickly turned to dust from lack of rain. never barefoot, i envisioned wanton bacteria covertly invading my sandals. i could easily die here. at night, after sitar concerts or philosophy lectures, i left the meeting house to walk home, unwisely, alone, a tall pale ghost with a distinctly feminine shadow. there were no women in the preternaturally dark streets. beady eyes of street vendors hovered over flames, warming their pots of tea. as my sandals stumbled over the dusty path, i saw myself attacked, violated, robbed, or worse, fed into the ganges like men into the laughing jaws of kali. still, i prayed to her, mother of destruction and creation, dark wild goddess, protect me from my own ignorance.

v. godmother of punk

the pixies are the cause for some debate in empire records, if you remember, between ethan embry and that other guy. i first heard the pixies on a mix tape from C, my high school artist boyfriend. he collected songs that scared me--so intense in their professions of love and lust that i turned my cheek away from his eager lips. he backed off and made me a punk mix tape, which was mostly sonic youth and patti smith and other people i'd never heard of and did not appreciate until much later, when the tape played only squeaks and rumpled metallic rotations that soon ceased altogether. such is the ephemeral nature of high school love.

my sister married her high school boyfriend, after years of long distance car trips back and forth between texas colleges, passing miles and miles of pasture and outlet malls. now they own a house and two cars but no pets, other than the feral bunnies that leave spherical droppings in the yard. i expect i'll be an aunt soon, but i'm not sure i'm old enough to babysit helpless creatures that might, just a little bit, look like me.

speaking of getting older, i appreciate being born at the darkest time of the year. i am full of mystery, while the rest of creation is full of light. my horoscope says sagittarians should not to go to beijing or london as we would constantly feel watched, only i remember belfast as being much worse regarding surveillance and helicopters. sarah palin told alaskans to shoot wolves from helicopters, as if helicopters are readily available. maybe they are. i've never been to alaska but i'd love to go, back to the darkness from which i am born. there is a rilke poem about that, once written in chalk on my ceiling.

iv. barack obama

dear mr. president,

a lot of people sure have pinned their hopes on you. are hopes light, like balloons and feathers, so that you might ascend straight up like elijah one day? or are they heavy, becoming burdensome once transferred, like insignificant pebbles which nonetheless sink to the bottom of the ocean floor? are your shoes filling up with salt water, born of so many tears, causing your soles to squeak and your socks to rub blisters into your protruding ankle bones? (for even you have ankle bones, just like the rest of us.) will the oceans ever dry out? will you ever have clean socks again? will those hopes, like so many stones and feathers, yield a giant band-aid on this great nation or only be used to tickle the lucky and forever bruise the downtrodden? are you really ready to learn what hope is? and finally, is there an end to hope, like our oil reserves and bailout fund and number of young who may be sacrificed in the name of selfish, selfish war?

don't let my questions alarm you. i am glad you are willing to take this on. please keep walking, though your soles may squeak, and audaciously confront our tears and oceans of regret and self-indulgent apathy. a few of us are trying to make things better. your election is one of the most significant events in my life, so in that way, hope has already won.

by the way, your kids seem rad, not to mention first lady michelle. would y'all like to come to dinner at my house and meet my cats?

yours truly, a gentle patriot,

ann crews melton

iii. after L

dearest L,

i met a girl at school who reminds me of you. she is also blonde and beautiful in a remarkable way, and she clutches her lighter and cigarettes with shaky hands. she is too kind to tell the awkward ones, her own misfit entourage drawn to her like the pied piper, to let her be. her smile is reluctant and bashful like yours and she flushes quickly when drunk. her clothes are edgy and fashionable, while yours were edgy and fierce, in your miniskirts and boots and metal. refusing to wash became part of your charm. what do we make of the hopes of those days, the imperative to do something contrary to culture? have you stood strong, with your bikes and your rats and your music, or, like me, have you begun to give into the ebb and flow? now my only hope is that this too often cruel world is being kind to you. have you been able to stop smoking? are you doing okay without your pills? "it is not we who are crazy, it is the world," you said, and i love you for that. all the same i swallow my pills every day, because stopping was a sojourn into hell, clinging to pain and mistrusting those i love. how does such a little pill make me able to love and survive?

and so it is, and so it is, and so it always thus shall be?

much love,
A

p.s. i haven't taken out my piercing since we got it done in M---. remember that tattoo artist named shyla who ate her own flesh? she found her religion in needles. i can only hope that we all arrive at such strong faith.

p.p.s. please say hello to the other ocean for me.

ii. memento mori

tonight my apartment reminds me of france. my former life in france was, as one might expect, devastatingly beautiful. the negative allure of the french existed in deep black rivulets that covered my walls, but i found them only fascinating, unaware of their potential entrapment. a large oak tree sturdily approached my windows, through which light would flicker silently. a neighbor told me that the tree was the oldest in town, steadily uprooting our uneven brick courtyard. my ghostly cat lusa and i lived alone together. i believe that we were stunning in our loneliness. i spent the weekends listening to records, staring at the black rivulets growing toward the ceiling, and falling asleep to sometimes troubled dreams.

i often took walks just to look into windows at dusk, fascinated by the white-walled rooms which inevitably glowed yellow in the encroaching dark. there was one apartment a few streets away with a balcony i coveted, covered in distressed brick and ivy and twinkling lights. i was certain no one lived there, and that the light had erased any encroaching blackness that might creep into one's mind. the apartment remained empty for my imagination to explore.

at home i would sit on my own meagre balcony (which faced a wall) and smoke herbal cigarettes, the plumes illuminated by the sun like wisps of spiderweb. i found a love who lived far away, whose ideas captivated, whose bold voice haunted my sometimes troubled dreams. when i saw him in person he evaporated, or i did, after he bought (or stole) me fresh berries. clutching handfuls of his mist i flew home to my white dream cat and white plume smoke to sleep on my beige worn couch, dreaming bold black dreams.

i. nkeng

My sophomore year of college, my intended roommate did not return to school, so I was paired with an international student. Nkeng was from Cameroon, in her third year as a pre-med, and had not seen her family since she began school in the States. We maintained a congenial but restrained acquaintanceship; I had my friends, and while I was intrigued by her difference (and silently congratulated myself on the diversity of my dorm-room environment), I did not exert the effort to truly befriend her. Besides, I reasoned, it’s better not to become too close to your roommate—then you end up spending too much time together and inevitably fighting or harboring resentment.

When we did hang out, we laughed a lot, and I can easily recall the perfectly round moon of her face breaking into a smile. One time I assisted her while she put in hair extensions, a laborious process that took all afternoon in front of the television. Other times, though, I found the constant laugh track of American sitcoms grating. She constantly crunched on chips that stained her long, brown fingers. When I returned from a trip, I found one of my dresses stretched out. She eventually made some friends in the science building; nevertheless, I could not completely ignore how lonely her life must have been.

Years later I ran into Nkeng in the middle of Harvard Square, weaving among pedestrians near the newsstand. We saw one another at the same time and paused for a bewildered embrace. She was studying chemistry and still had not returned home to visit her family. I was working in town after meandering across the country, settling here to be with friends. We exchanged phone numbers and said our goodbyes, but did not call one another. I suspected we would have nothing to talk about.