I remember I used to receive love
letters from him and found them so pleasurable
I could only read in quick gulps,
trying not to get brain freeze, skipping whole phrases
so that they slid straight down
the back of my throat. This is when we lived
in different states. I’d have to go back
and reread them a few minutes later,
slowly this time, accounting for each slice
of punctuation, every pause and break.
I let myself experience the sensation
of each sentence decorating my entire body.
I remembered all this on a hike,
working my way up a very steep hill.
The wind whipped the grass to seltzer,
my breath grew louder and louder,
my lungs winding their coils.
I climbed through and out
the memory like a net
until it broke. I reached the top
and cried with no warning. I used to be very new
to myself and now I was accustomed to everything.
How embarrassing.
I looked down into the valley, at the little white cars.
The grass so neon yellow my eyes couldn’t adjust
their exposure. Depth of field caused me to expand
like a sheet on the line. I felt like I was in my body for the first time
in a long time, and also like I didn’t have that much
time left inside it. I’m not alone anymore.
This morning I heard the man
who lives downstairs say I love you to the woman—
not the words, but the rhythm, the shape, and I filled in the rest
as if with red crayon. It’s a phrase I still know
intimately. I didn’t want to hike back down
that hill, back down to the place
where language thinks it can promise
itself to me, back where
it strangles and gasps
and helps me pretend
I’m special enough to survive
my own life. But I did.
It didn’t take long at all.