allegiance

i used to write

i used to write and later they told me you couldn’t read them. if you got it, if you begged teachers to show you, it didn’t stop the way they tracked you, or teach you how to read. which does make me wonder what became of our countless excuses for contact, the dime store flower fields you never got. the ones i would walk three blocks to mail to a boy across the street. i wonder what became of the times when i did write and if you knew that in all those notes, from report backs on diamonds at summer camp to the long-winded streams over ice ponds, that every letter was always the same letter with the same hope that we would keep them. and if i haven’t written, it’s only because things have become somewhat more permanent. 44 ...