A letter to the dead.

I used to write beautiful things when I was happy.
I knew they were beautiful because you would come in and peer over my shoulder, which annoyed me, and you would tell me very simply, "That is beautiful." It was the only time you ever tried to admit you were proud of me.
I would write metaphors, I would write similies. I would write small poems on bits of tissue and rip the top layer with the point of my pen. And you would come in and say, "That is beautiful."

I remember the day you died. By the end of August the weather had become strange; there was an unusual proportion of mid-summer's dry heat which permeated the shortening days. The rose petals stood like small glass vials filled with cream and milk and pink sugar. There were too many bees, and I couldn't lie in the backyard on my towel without being molested by them.

I can think about the day but there is much else that I do not allow myself to think about. I do not allow myself the image of you connected to all those tubes. How they would come and turn you, side to side, and put vasoline on your lips with their fingers, and comb your hair to the side. I do not allow myself to think about how I lied in bed that morning with the light streaming in through my wispy shade, wishing away knowing that I had to go and see you, and kiss your forehead, and whisper goodbye to you. You had changed. It was your body but already you weren't there.

I don't allow myself to think about how beautiful my writing used to be. I can barely remember my favorite sentences, and I cannot remember yours. You would say them out loud to yourself and smile gently. Recently a man asked me what was Italy like? And I told him it was like eating chocolate all day and never getting sick of it. I hated that metaphor. It felt false and ugly. It was trite and stupid. Never like when I used to write beautifully.

I have entered the city now. I have sat here and thought perhaps you would call, but I know really you can't do that now, can you? You should have been busy here too, with your own friends. Perhaps we wouldn't have stayed in touch anyway. Sometimes I walk down the sidewalk on the side of Central Park, the morning still cool and damp, and watch the street vendors set up shop on old tablecloths and flimsy tables with rusty legs. They all sell the same things. I walk down and then up after I've reached 86th Street, because we never went much farther down than that, unless I had made a mistake and continued walking and you just followed me and watched me get lost. But you followed so you could lead me back and you would laugh at me and say that's just what I did, I got lost, but you would lead me back.

You have been dead too long. It was too soon. These are also ugly things I say, although they aren't forced into metaphors.

I am very poor and you would not have enjoyed me being poor. I have lines on my face that shouldn't be there for another ten years. I don't smoke. I drink a little too much and a little too often on my own. I have a television but I don't use it. I have a typewriter but it is mostly for show. I have my computer and on that I write proliferately. No one comes in and looks over my shoulder and tells me it is beautiful.

It isn't beautiful. But that's the way these things go.