We make amends with letter writing: as sympathy note, report
of a son’s height marked on the door to his father serving
time. & check for word—days & Sundays—the red flag stays
erect. I tell someone I’ll write you a letter & what I’m saying is
I don’t know where to put my hands. Penmanship stretches
thinner & thinner as though I could switch to wire, wave, light—
alight beneath your skin. I want the letter reminding me
to not forget lotion, first. That you keep my hair tie
around your wrist, snapping it all the time so as
to stun yourself back from ghost. Where both of us step
to the parking garage, bodies pressed against concrete. Here
we are, & chapped. Where is the letter for no going back,
of a two-step grown too big, our motion that needs all-caps?
