When He Knew for Certain Only Drowning Men Could See Him

Dear B.

Lately I’ve been craving black tea and blood oranges.

Lately I’ve been thinking about thinking and about apostrophe and what comes after the epistolary form ends. Of course. I’m certain. You’ve been thinking too. Probably. About the way we can’t be certain that lost things aren’t somewhere in another interstellar dimension or in the museum of temporal anomalies or in the pawnshop next to the nation lend down the hill on north oak you know the one remember right between the total wine spirits & smoke shop where james’ son was murdered after hours and left on the loading dock
or behind the electric stove with the wolf spiders and fried skin cells or as matter is neither created nor destroyed simply not simply transformed into someone else’s book.
It’s winter again the month a horsehead nebula and I still haven’t figured out anything about living or dying. The clouds are gray. The land is purple. And there is a thin ribbon resisting arrest. Nothing is funny anymore.
There is an old joke about naked ghosts feeling bitter cold and sorry for themselves or freed I can’t remember but either way admitting the price of invisibility is no clothes. I love you. Naked or otherwise and now the joke is a profession. The letter is a confessional.
‘Your letters they all say that you’re beside me now.’ Then why is the dew heavy on the grasses (on the crown) and the filaments still not drawn. Then why do I still miss chrome diners and vinyl booths and the red sun rising over ‘the refinery towers.’
Contrary to popular belief smoking actually saves lives I mean money which is one way to think about venom and life and justice. When everyone is in plain clothes some folks will simply melt ‘into air.’
‘Can’t you hear me knocking.’ Mama said ‘there will be days’ wait she said never open the door. She said wait. Make them knock it down.
Please I think to know Are you proud. Do you think I am guilty. Bless me. Bless you. I can’t stop sneezing. Love. Or are you (already or/and always) a ghost receiving a letter from a ghost.