allegiance

why i haven’t written

why i haven’t written because there’s a storm coming and nothing to say and the paper shortage and the last time we opened windows from the fever, until daybreak and the house was dirty and we were snowed in and we wondered how close we really were and we said, let’s wait and see. nothing worth being new. since you married, we only speak of road trips the way one pretends to remember the cross streets of gory accidents aside from chatter about old friends (who also haven’t written) because i loved you, the way only a coward can, head cocked and hands out and because to write would be to bring up the dusky sunset where there used to be a carnival every spring for the neighborhood kids. now it’s an empty lot. and i haven’t written you because you raised me, and to write would be to traipse a barbed wire across distance, admit it would be to erect a cage to show off what we can’t say. the days you once woke me in winter, before school, are over, and without them we are failing. 42 all of this, i told you the last time i wrote, from the last state, that i wouldn’t write in case of war, should i suddenly feel ashamed, and turn up gathering in mobs, or joke about needing evidence of good people. script gets to be a parasite looking for soft spots in the skin. and i haven’t written you because we are still sharing handfuls of licorice, and you stick around until it’s gone, and in my head it’s all over everything while we sort through boxes of old journals, find space to walk in, the leap of years. if i wrote, i would need a thousand days for one to fret that place to place, the pickup in your names turned to echo, a pollen carried like a praying mantis in white sheets beneath the desert blades of a fan. and to write when the fuse blew would be to turn it with my hands. 43 ...