Monday
dear 9535 hey, you look pretty badass out there. Weathering this weather. I am one of those people who can’t get warm in winter. You can see me peeking out the window above the flower bed, looking like a nomad in my furred coat hood. I know you know I have not left the house in days. Being honest here, it’s not just the cold. Which do you prefer, being empty or full? I like being both. Yrs, Claudia J.
Tuesday
dear 9535, you be the horse, I’ll be the cabbie. Like in that Chekov story. The cab driver’s son has died and all night he tries to tell his passengers about it; fare after fare no one will listen. Finally, after his shift, as he stands feeding his horse hay, he whispers his anguish into the horse’s ear. Let me talk in your ear for awhile. Stomp once for yes! Yrs, Claudia J.
Wednesday
dear 9535, I’m sure you have mail for him and more will come. Endlessly. If I circle his name and write DECEASED and put it back in the box, supposedly they get the message. Supposedly this corrects the system. How unpleasant would that be. Writing DECEASED half a dozen times, day after day. We were married for 49 years. It is hard to let go when the world won’t, right? Yrs, CJ.
Thursday
dear 9535, did you know they used to mail kids? I read the first was James Beagle. 8 months old, 11 lbs. He was was insured for $50. Standing out there, you look like a haiku trying to write itself: something /something / only a wisp of snow inside the mail box or something / something / his footpath to the mailbox melting. Yrs, Claudia J.
Friday
dear 9535, sad news today. Close by, two brothers built a snow fort, tunneled into a big wall of snow the trucks had pushed up roadside, and it collapsed on them. No one knew for hours. When they dug them out, they found their hands touching, kind of holding, as if somehow the dark of all that white they found each other. Comforted each other til the end. The local news kept talking about that, about their hands, as if that should make it easier for everyone.
Monday
dear 9535, alone now, I spend a lot of time just sitting, just looking at everything in the room I’m in. Taking inventory. Today, in this floral pattern on one of our chairs, a chair we’ve had for ages, I see a butterfly, and the closer I look into the pattern, the more butterflies I see. They’re everywhere. I wonder what else I might discover, what else has been here all along. I remember the last time I pulled open your door it squeaked like an old clanky robot’s jaw. We could both use some oil. Yrs, Claudia J
Wednesday
dear 9535, what I am trying to say is, he has been gone three weeks now, and his footprints in the path he wore through the snow to reach you are likely the last last thing. The last physical trace. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not see them. What I am trying to say is, death’s stark organizational skills have opened up all this space in the house and I am floating through it in a peculiar way. Like in that David Bowie song. What I am trying to say is, talking to you is talking to myself, is trying to make sense of loss through a language that, like a baby, I haven’t even begun to understand. Yrs, CJ.
About the Author
Keith Woodruff lives in San Antonio, TX with a backyard full of moody tomato plants. His poetry has appeared in Sundog Lit, New World Writing Quarterly, and Bear Review. His flash/micro appeared in lovely places like Wigleaf, Does it Have Pockets?, HAD, Pithead Chapel, FlashFlood and most recently Roi Faineant Press. Read him in BSF 2017 and 2019. He was awarded a 2018 Pushcart prize. www.keithawoodruff.com. @keithwoodruff.bsky.social
