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.