Letter to Emilia no. 1

How fresh and recent you are in my memory, dear heart, though I have not spoken of you in a lifetime or more and though I would not be writing on this page if there were a chance that you should read it.

Summer turns to autumn but the air is hot. The national conversation is a rhetorical nightmare, my countrymen on the island of Puerto Rico are devastated by storm and sea, and the Rohingya are dying in Burma. I have been spending nights accompanied by thoughts that sprawl formlessly over my bed and sink through the carpet and floorboards.

There is no woman for me now and I find this terribly comforting- without the constant worry of betrayal my life becomes more calm and controllable. I have not been drinking for some time and so I have not been trying to be a poet, either, which is no loss to poetry although it feels as loss to me. I am aware that the touch of man profanes and my own hand seems to have this effect with great speed, and so despite my lost and discarded relics I try to smile as I go through my days.

I have been thinking lately of the last time that I had guns pointed at me. It was a little over two years ago and one thing led to another and the police were suddenly inside my door pointing shotguns and rifles and pistols at me, which I found surprising at the time. I remember the rush of cold as my blood froze in my veins and I said “This is my house, don’t shoot me” and I was aware that I looked like a madman, shirtless in basketball shorts with sweat glistening on my shaved head and an axe by the bookshelf and so much brandy on my breath that even I could smell it, and although I had wanted to die or thought I did I suffered the supreme indignity- surrender to the threat of violence. Though I had committed no crime but madness I walked from my house with my hands over my head and once outside I kept my hands over my head until an ambulance arrived because the police had shot a handcuffed man in the back of a squad car earlier that year just a mile down the road from where I sat and I knew then as I have always known that if a policeman shoots me there will be no justice. They looked somewhat amused or embarrassed or ashamed when they asked why I still had my hands up and I told them I did not want them to kill me. They said they didn’t want to kill me, so I pointed out that they came into my home and pointed guns at me, and that is what people who want to kill people do. I do not know if they were prepared to concede the point but the ambulance arrived and when the paramedics’ boots hit the ground I knew I wasn’t going to die so I started crying and I do not remember too much after that except sleep.

The first question, and it really is the only question, is “would they have shot me if I was black?” My luxury is that I never have to know.

I shall do my best to never write to you again. I may write to you tomorrow.

Letter to Cordelia no. 3

One day long ago you and I were riding in a car and you were driving of course and I had just been ranting about something that I probably didn’t care that much about and you had been patiently listening. We drove in silence for a few minutes and then I asked you what you were thinking about. You reacted to my question with suspicion, not because you were hiding something but because I had not asked you what you were thinking for many weeks. I often think of this event when I have failed to meet my obligations to someone, especially if my failure is an expression of a habit that I have formed.

For some reason I was thinking about these things today as I sat near a fire-pit on a large stone, wiping bright blood from my hands onto the dirt and grass. They were driving the backhoe around the house to collect the corpse and I figured someone would have to move her so I picked her up by all four feet and her four wounds like metal fingerprints moved along with us and I threw her body into the loader and that was when I walked away and sat down and I almost started laughing although I didn’t want to laugh at all. It was not what I thought I would be doing on my lunch break. I tried to be careful when carrying her but I ended up with bloodstains on my jeans anyway and so when I went back to work for my second shift on Labor Day I did it with the blood of a dog I liked on my clothes. Maybe it was necessary. I was not there when she was shot so I did not know. Anyway it was not actually my business. I do not know why I am telling this story.

I forgot to make my bed when I left for work this morning and so when I got back to my little room I stripped off my shoes and socks and shirt and the pants stained beyond repair and pulled the sheets tight and put a quilt at the foot of the bed. It is a fine quilt I suppose but mine is being repaired at the moment and no other quilt is satisfactory in comparison. When I decide to search for sleep tonight I will slide in beneath the sheets and toss the topmost sheet up in the darkness and wait for it to gently coolly fall on my body and that is not the same as having a good day but it is better than it could have been. I do not control the past, the present or the future, but I control the sheets. That is enough. It has to be. It is what I have.