Respect the Art of the Show

Dear B.  

After yesterday’s cleaving       I bought a lottery ticket from a gas station off the highway       not the interstate       on the highway       you know       the one with the statue of the sinister bright green dinosaur       kids always want to climb       but we say no because after all blood and oil and the world isn’t a tent filled with gold tropes and candles and I felt lucky      better even       but when I went        to the woods       I was still not me again and so I forgot who was praying.       
You might remember that you came later       after       in anticipation of uplift       the sun waving into and off       the leaves      casting green light       in essence promised but you could not bear my perpetual condition       my nerves severed       myelin sheaths stripped       fibers laid raw       and my dumb heavy brain without diagnostic code       sloshing on in ritual grief.       I am sorry. Therapy is a pin and the sentence slips out of my hands and now I’m on my knees again. And now I am wondering      is this too personal and meaningful for extraction      I mean       abstraction       (I think)       or do you think this is how we all become pharaohs without our headpieces. 
I think I’m OK with bowing if it means we can’t be reduced to a commodity  or property rights.
I think it would be cruel to die in bed next to someone you loved or really anyone       but I also don’t want to die alone.  
Maybe it’s not turtles all the way down but cruelty. The dog’s barking out a warning      but no one’s at the door and the neighbor kids aren’t home from school yet. 
Maybe the letter is a doorbell and this time I don’t answer. Maybe someday you’ll look down from reading the sky and say       did you see the balloons       and       I love you         I really do       as if you had any clue how to remove a splinter from a body made of splinters or what love means.