sidebrow

Dear Kelly,

I feel it’s time to wear more skirts, it’s time to change brains, it’s time to up my dose, it’s time for less empathy. I don’t have any appetite for this appetite. I tell my lover she’s my little Hamlet when she cries and cries.

Let me explain: the feeling there’s something else you’re supposed to be doing is terrible as a flock of birds. I tried to up the antecedent. I was fit to burst with words. Honey, I wanted the hit.

Dear Kelly,

I hear you’ve parted your hair a new way for the music video. I myself am dividing tasks according to what can be completed in front of the television, the depressive’s gesticulations toward order. On my complaint letter to the airlines, my “sincerely” has been upgraded to “best wishes” — the twitching rabbit of ordinary brutality. Small bones, you say. Still, you must protect your throat from the hawks that can swoop down like the next big lie.

Dear Kelly,

At a cold blue table a horn pinches at the air, its leads, its gestures. I didn’t want to depart from the recording but my lungs had started to feel the effects of television’s unfinished repair. Like my sister’s face on the flute, that greenery, suburban pointillism, I’m not even sure you can read music. I am so tired of pointing, just pointing.

Dear Kelly,

This winter, everyone’s hunched over in their own private airplane seats, sight-reading the street. Do I deserve new clothes? Ugh, what a repetitive gesture. They say you’ve also “parted ways” with your 2002 image. If you look on IMDB you’ll see some people like your ass but not your face. This puts me in such a despondency I know now how I want the book to end: on a crease.