CALL ME BELOVED

Consider the audience, how
she’ll jump from her chair, terrified
by the swinging clang of the mail slot –
consider the envelope, abandoned,
just joining the jetsam of junk mail
lingering lonely until slender, tremulous
hands tear into the insides, hungry to
fatten up – cold is coming, famine with it –
consider it’s already been said, she’s already
chewed it, all those words crumpled up,
tossed, and discarded – consider

another medium. Consider postcards,
how you could couch concern within
a lovely little vista. Wish you were here.
Consider the cost of stamps, versus
costs of courting with silence, how
quiet needs to be punctuated before
the ever-present ringing sets back in,
consider how emptiness cries to be wasted,
mewling, awful books chock full of blank pages –
consider the island of each postal bin, drop box,
the trucks, each conveyer belt, set of eyes
and hands which a letter must pass through –
consider the certainty of delivery, versus the
desperate scrabbling of being misunderstood.
Consider words, themselves, how they’ll weaponize,
grow like tumors so they can thrive, choke
out green growth, crawl like greedy vines, or
how tree roots glacially move the sidewalks,
suburban continental drift, slowly. Certainly.
Consider all of the costs.
Send the letter, anyway.