Dear S,
A thin layer of water separates us. Dark petals from Liam’s grandmother’s bouquet float on the surface. The nights shorten; blue flowers cover the yard, bloom into negative space.

Dear S,

After you died 
cut flowers reminded me
that when you’re sixteen
and you need flowers,
it’s urgent.

Our arms were skinny enough to reach through the rolling shutter and just long enough—our faces reaching against the cold metal—to grab the two closest bouquets by the edge of their crackly plastic wrap and pull them though the hole in the grate, stems first, smelling of water. We met our crushes four blocks away in the alley out back of my garage. They were impressed. We stood a moment with the bouquets under the streetlamp before going inside. They asked us where we got the flowers, we said it was magic. I remember thinking that we probably won’t arrive again with flowers in the middle of the night to give to people we barely know, and we never did—some things aren’t meant to be put back in the ground some things are meant to be cut and given away. Some things only happen and smell good when they’re stolen and cut and given away.



 








Dear S,
Shells sounding the ocean—is this absence? Is the unwritten absence? Is post in transit absence? Is transition absence? Is progression absence? Is transformation absence? Is absence music?
The frogs stop; a bright coin levels with the soft ground: absence is a threshold. 

Dear S,
My grapefruit this morning split with a knife. 
There is a glass door in front of me—leaded panes, white chipped wood, brass handle. The door is half-open. Beyond it are stairs.
Greetings and goodbyes occur on a threshold. The doorhandle is a stooped ferrywoman, bringing us here and leaving us there, and when closed contains something open: transformation. The cost: ourselves. We must grab hold. Is there not something of a dance—of love—in this exchange? 
Bear and I sit quietly in the living room. Sometimes I want to escape interior spaces, find shelter in a vast field and feel the trees huddle together, pushing closer, to not be separate in the dark. 
















Dear S,
I married Liam and Isabelle last year. Kalen felt that he wouldn’t have been a part of the wedding party if you were still alive, and had to leave before dinner to cry outside the garden fence beside the ripe blackberries.

Dear S,
A bunch of dried roses hangs above my door. Doorknobs reach for us as we reach for them. They clutch our wrist, flash a gold tooth, and give us a length of string. 
If I were a doorknob, I would:
enjoy the feeling of hands
enjoy being opened, closed
enjoy being bright in the sun but cold to the touch
aspire to wornness




















Dear S,
It’s too dark to see the figure running on the gravel track. Rosie carries two sticks and then drops one and looks back and waits. There’s a crescent moon and the maples are bare.  

Dear S,
There’s hot small vein between my temple and ear that makes me think of birdsong. I wonder how that would feel on your body—birdsong and the hot small vein between your temple and ear.























Dear S,
What part of a person would a doorknob be? I’m not thinking about the body, but fox pups, ravines choked with windfall, flooded bogs. Fittedness—that’s what exists between lock and key, your hand, this handle. Where is it? Does the space of one thing fit with another—do they never join, and instead marry their space?
A cheap doorknob leads to my suite. Sometimes I want to destroy it out of a wish to be exposed. 
I’ve just started reading The Dispossessed (you would love it) and in a scene near the beginning a character from a planet without locks is locked (somewhat benignly) in a room. It is terrifying, the way submarines are terrifying. 
Maybe we shouldn’t take locks so lightly. Maybe we can curate the space between us lovingly. Maybe fitting together is way of holding on of letting go of turning like a garden. 




















Dear S,
The streetlights are on but there’s still birds singing. Playing basketball in the rain gave me a limp. There’s a cherry blossom branch tucked behind the sign and a bat hunting in the sky above the pond.

Dear S,
There’s a bell buried outside my window, a tin of shoe grease and dried flowers on my desk. I hold my ear to the door and listen.