There Are Bright Signs in the Crystal Ball—I’d Say Yes

Dear Aunt Debra, my intuition tells me a man wrote those fortunes you read. Did you ever notice that every ticket said

yes? Sleep with him, wear that dress, red lipstick to pucker your lips for that kiss you should give him, even after you learned he’d enlist.

Did you see each ticket had a snide remark etched on the back: what clothes mean to women, what women mean to men. I wish I’d known you

back then, I could have told you it’s all a load of shit. I heard Steve’s still alive, and he never got over the day you died. He’s been married, divorced,

moved away. I have those letters you wrote and never sent, and I wonder if you would have liked me to give them to him. I didn’t know you,

so I have to pretend. It’s not that hard, Debra, once you know men, the way they make you ache all over, the way you wish just one would say

I love you, and mean it, how you can’t leave even when you know it’s best. Every single damn bone in your body aches, but you can’t leave

that man, you can’t stop writing to him. I took flowers to your grave and thread it with yellow. I said a prayer I didn’t believe in, I felt your hand

in my hand. I felt all those men and the centuries of women spurned between us.