tbh #8

no method 

can rival a letter 

written by hand

describing the thoughts the 

feelings to convey

you truly care

much less effective

to be honest 

when you fail to 

drop said letter in

the mail

#katyamills

 

in kind

Correspondence was not much fun anymore. i was lucky if i got a card in the mail. emails made me nervous because there were so many awaiting reply. the days of receiving long letters penned in script by hand in ink on someone's personal stationery were over. i had a thought. if i took the time to write letters the old way again, bypassing text and email and chat and video, and even bypassing phone, would I get a response in kind? and then might time turn back for us and write our lives the way we once wrote them, when we wrote long missives on personal stationery with silver trim and painted envelopes, hanging sideways over our elbows, quietly playing with each letter,  slowly, conscientiously by scripted hands, young and rolling in ink.

letter

one lonely night ona

edge ina pool
of light

inscribed by hand
taken from the scene

collected bya squeeze 

ofa heart

folded in thirds

double encrypted
inaccessible to all

but one

like pores
touched by witch

hazel

ona edge

ina pool

of light 

one candle

 night

kept

 from a
world and

given

you

- KatYa

light in august and shredded mail

The guitar. The bicycle. The running shoes. The webcam. The laptop. The unopened mail. The opened mail. The shredded mail. It's August and sure enough I risk being overexposed again. Doesn't take much nowadays. I do my best work predawn. And I'm sorry to the ones I love whose lives are not yet settling with the dust. There's little chance I will be able to open my doors to let you in, this month. 

August and the light cannot be intimidated by glass of any thickness. From a distance I see (and even feel) your struggle, for it only takes a few words or an image to convey. Maybe you want to stand before me so I can see and know more, but what good would it do? We both know I am not the solution to your troubles, though I may make a petty salve. Triple antibiotic. I offer my heart, my mind, my spirit. 

I would so like to say I love you, the spirit of you, the best in you, but what good would it do? You should know by now, you should. Deep down I think you do, otherwise you wouldn't be inviting me back in again. I am honored, too. A few years ago nobody was inviting me anywhere. I was always tryin to be so hard and now I have softened again under the sun, how did I become so soft and hard like glass to light? Who am I to be a walking contradiction and how do you walk, this way?

August. I think on Faulkner who somehow captured it for me, or wrapped my sense of it with his own personal papers. He made August more real for me. There may have been others but I cannot remember. I think of Rodin, but only because his first name was August. I won't have any children, but if I had a boy I might name him the same, for we could nick him - Oggy!

We see no end to any summer in August in the valley, the light and heat will have their way with us through September and often into October. And some of us, what once was me, will see no end to misery, misfortune and pain. Nobody should be told they brought this on themselves, but if you have been there like I have, you also know that you had some part in it, and maybe even the largest of all the roles. For you are always there in the center of it, are you not?

Learn your lines well, my dear, and know you are not alone. I am behind you as well, with others whose parts are also to be played. I will take that deep breath from behind the curtains, steady myself and walk in under the lights with you in my own time and when the script demands it. Your stage presence in your own life is irrefutable.