Dear friend,

 

    I am sorry for never returning your flowers. You frightened me off; it’s mostly my fault but in this letter I’ll attribute all I can to you, for the sake of a third person. Months and months we strained that spiderweb correspondence for—a couple sodas in glass bottles, cat hair in papercuts and blurry sunset JPGs? 

 

I did read every one of them, I wouldn’t want you to know, green smudges under my nails. I dreamed of you, in the Spanish sun, clattering to the post office, and woke sweating. I left your photos scattered on my floor like rotting leaves. My too-little note hones towards where you were.

 

Never yours,

Aching in Altadena