Postcard 73

In a rush from the car to the house in the too cool air, he remembered to grab the last few days' mail. Unease from the dark driven into, and sharpened with the headlights cut, followed him in. He fumbled keys and dropped the mail in a clumsy fan in his unnecessary rush. Sure to shut the door firmly behind him, he sought the lights. Switched on, he saw the postcard kicked past the threshold alone on the cool tile. What is this? Not a wish you were here, or majestic nature, nor mighty buildings in their dotage. Not even bikini-clad humor, but a chopped assemblage out of context: a masked, or unmasked and disembodied woman with hair cast like fire, the wrong hands crawled past her, reaching from and into some impossible gate, like a theory drawn out only to fulfill its uncanny form. The moon, or a planet, loomed and pulled and cast a ring of dripping black gravity. Behind all this random words floated down and settled in deep mysterious drifts. He flipped it over. It was only vaguely addressed to him and bore no return address. The text started and stopped in an irrelevant middle and was frustratingly self-descriptive. It sung along like a blind wire, and seemed even to attempt impotently to describe him in the moment. The strange epistle held in his hand had a charge as if written under moonlight. He looked away from the card and let it fall, fluttering silently away to a dark corner. He felt compelled to see himself and stepped further into the house to a half-lit mirror. The man gazing back did not menace, but was decidedly unfamiliar. They examined each other with curious unease.

Postcard 72

There was a woman who spoke only music. I say 'was' because she is gone now. I say 'music' because that is what came out of her, not words sung, no words. Not just humming, though hum she did, and whistle and click and clack and spit and sigh and warble and sing in any way you might imagine a person would make music without words, and many you would not because your imagination is not up to the task, bound as it is by words and syntax. That is how she would communicate, call and respond anyway. Her teachers, when she had them as a girl, were more than sympathetic. They were not martinets and she filled them with awe and wonder. She's not doing what she should, they would say, but we let her be, so unique and wondrous a child. The system of school, however, could not tolerate her and she was made to leave. Many people could understand the girl, a young woman by then. People from all walks of life: teachers, children, engineers, trash-men, doctors, fast-food-window workers, it did not really matter. Some did, some did not. There was no rhyme or reason, just a facility of reason open to her tones and rhythms. So it was perhaps just a series of misfortunes that led her through the people who would decide her fate, destroy her. The first was the social services worker who decided she needed to be evaluated, and who grew more resolute in her decision as the singing woman voiced her dissent in angry stochastic melody. Next was the evaluating clinician who could hardly be blamed for her evaluation, for her subject's songs grew confused and dis-harmonic in response to the dizzying evaluation questions. Of course, one could blame the sadistic operators of the institution that held the woman, who's neglect and torment tortured angry bellowing opuses out of her, filling the halls and rooms with ominous climbing and descending adagios. When they broke the woman, when she took her life, only the ignorant laundrywoman heard the haunting song.

Postcard 71

The white-hot moon holds the sheet-dark sky. The white-hot moon burns itself in your eyes. Carry that. Lay that bright hole on the pale body of your friend, naked in the grass in the sand: clarified moles, pure light bullet holes, surprise windows of a looking out soul. The sea sips at your feet and sighs its tickling shivers. At that moment, a triad: beautiful you, your friend/beloved and the white-hot moon. This pain pleasure is the top of an arc, is the gathering white chaos upon an inbound wave. This moment with your friend/your beloved, the pain-pleasure of giggling in the chill, is time suspended atop parabola. The past falls away and the future precipitous, and this moment is the pleasant tension, feeling salt-tight skin and that little grit discomfort. The burn in your eyes is the push-pull of whirl, of your beloved and their whirl too, sharing the feel: the smell of salt of smoke of sweat of chill, the cool radiance of other, the burn of now replaced by past. Hold tight let go the intermingle, the pause in arc of story. Hold tight let go before fear. Perceive and release your beloved and you in soft light, like the two of you and the dark sky in the grasp of the white-hot moon

Postcard 70

There was a couple with a child, a daughter, who lived in a small town in a distant wood. The couple lived at the edge of a forest that belonged to the village and they managed the timber and game. Their daughter ran freely and played in congress with the animals of the wood and with the children of the town. In the village was a manor with high walls, grass and gardens on one side, a cobblestone street far below on the other. The couple's child was one day playing and fell upon her head from the wall to the hard road. For a long time no one missed her. A cinder-woman found her crumpled and lifeless and took her to the owner of the manor who sent for her parents. You must take her to the healer in the next town, he told them, and he let them use his carriage and driver. The father held the listless girl who's head was swollen but did not bleed. She sighed and muttered but did not wake. As they travelled the road seemed to lengthen and the girl grew smaller in her father's arms. When they reached the healer, she was the size of an orange. They approached the healer, a proud and regal mandarin, with pleading. By the time he consented to see the girl, she was as small as a walnut. The healer took her in his hand and immediately put her in his mouth and swallowed her whole. "Where is girl?" The parents could only gape.

Postcard 69

I love you, he says. What does that even mean, she replies.  I love you, he says. You do but you're not very good at it, he replies. I love you, she says. He leaves the room, terrified. I love you, she says. Me too, she replies. I love you, she says. They change the subject abruptly. I love you, she says. I know, he replies. I love you, he says. You're a fucking liar, he replies. I love you, she says. Do you? he asks. I love you, they say. Then why do you hurt me, she asks? I love you, he says. Right now, in this moment, he replies. I love you, they say. I love you too, they reply. I love you, he says. You know better than that, she replies. I love you, he says. I didn't ask for that, she replies. I love you, he says. Its only fucking, she replies. I love you, she says. Prove it, she replies. I love you, they say. Please don't, he replies. I love you, she says. I used to love you, they reply. I love you, he says. Say it again, say it again, she replies. I love you, she says. She is asleep. I love you, she says. He is only a photograph, says nothing. I love you, they say. Goodbye, she replies. I love you, he says. You don't even know me, she replies. I love you, she says. That used to mean something, he replies. I love you, she says. Yes, you do, she replies. I love you, I say.