Self-Portrait As Letter Addressed To Self

By J. Michael Martinez

X.X.,

 

Someday, across glacier, a green horse will ride toward you; despite steam rising from heavy breath, you’ll touch its snout.

When you paired a person’s gait to signature, what lilt signed your step? What tautology, what tense was this body’s hypothesis?

Do you remember your mother’s Strawberry Fruit-Salad Recipe? 2 round Angel Cakes (2 pounds or 4 halves), 16 oz of vanilla pudding, 4 bananas, 2 containers of 8 oz strawberries, 1 big container of whipped cream. Layer and eat.

Your hands shaking, you wrote, “Christ is sentiment.

A cup cracked through with sky. A saucer planed into the shapes of numbers. Every written thing stripped bare, the more supple formulation of given law.

I told you distance to a thing is the purchase of its reality. Why are people like that for us? The more we love the more physical space our love inhabits & the world’s lightness’ & darkness’ assume the order of human tongue.

Last night we tore & tossed memories into ponds. Geese swam across, pecked the waters. I splashed at them &, after, my hands shook. You stood beside me in a red dress. I wanted to drown you this pretty.

xoxo,
X.X.

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