Open Letter #10, to a boy in juvie

What are you doing in jail, boy with a face like a misty morning field?  What did you do (what did this world do to you) to find yourself counting minutes between such drab walls?

This morning I dug through dresser drawers and rifled through hangers, searching for a non-gang-affiliated-color shirt, as I do every morning on the days I volunteer.  With a sigh, I settled on a turtleneck the color of a city sidewalk.  Then, wondering about the possibility of red, I slipped into a vest the color of an Oregon barn slick with newly fallen rain and ran for the bus.

Open Letter #9, to my mother for the holidays

It is easy to believe you never loved me when I think of my childhood and all the moments someone else's hands held me--easier still during the holidays when memories pull me back through the folds of time.

* * *

It is Mother's Day, and I am sitting in a classroom full of small desks and cubbies where classmates cut construction paper, bend over bins of crayons, and write love poems to their mothers.  I stare hard at their cards as tears cook the backs of my eyes.  I have nothing to say that feels true.  Even the heart I've cut is a lie.  When I think of you, I smell the rush of your perfume, feel your lips brush my sleeping cheek on your way out the door or back through it.  How can I thank you for leaving me?  Or for coming home only when I'm asleep?  Is it enough for you to be close when I dream?  

Open Letter #8, to my step-father for the holidays

Do you remember our first Christmas together in Pennsylvania?  How the presents under the tree sparkled in the sunlight shining through the large wall of windows in the living room?  There were more presents under that tree than I'd seen under any tree this side of a movie screen.  I remember sitting in a great unfurling of wire-rimmed ribbons and red and green wrapping paper, how we fed the colors to the fire before I slipped into my new down jacket and winter gloves and ran out the door with Fred, both of us clutching the sleds Santa had brought us.  Mine was a sturdy plastic green dish, a shade lighter than my coat.  I remember how the snow twinkled, how I sailed down the driveway so fast, not even the wind could touch me.  I remember thinking that things had changed.  I remember feeling safe.

That Christmas came two years after the morning I woke up in my dad's bed and the cops came to take my statement and less than a year after we'd moved from Florida, where the pieces of my life lifted from their moorings and flew around me like hurricane debris.  You know what I'm talking about because you saw some of what went on, and we told you the rest to get back at our mother.  But what you don't know is that it wasn't the presents I noticed so much that Christmas in Pennsylvania; what I saw was the lights shimmering on the tree because the power hadn't been cut off, what I heard was Christmas music rather than the phone ringing with bill collectors, what I felt was a stomach full of hot chocolate and orange juice and sticky buns, and what I understood was that with you around, I would no longer have to worry about not having enough to eat or not being able to see to do my homework because Mom hadn't paid the electricity bill.  Furthermore, I knew I could count on you to ask me about my day, to take me in your arms and listen to me rattle on about my adventures in the woods behind our house and the books I was reading and what I was learning in school.  You had become, in a relatively short time, a more dependable and doting parent than the ones who'd raised me.  And this was difficult to believe because you were also a tyrant.  I knew you'd never look at me the way my molester father did, and I knew you'd never be as cold as my mother, but you ran hot, and I had plenty of reasons to hate you.  Still, you never knew, I don't think, how grateful I was and am for many of the things you did.

One of the first and most cherished things you ever did for me was teach me to fish.  I remember the slippery rubber of the squid you bought for bait, how when I grabbed it from the box you kept in the freezer, it froze my skin, and how when I dangled a thawed triangle of the flesh between my fingers, it wiggled insouciantly.  You taught me how to wrap the bait around the hook so as to hide the barb, how to cast the line off your dock, how to spin the reel and jerk the pole to tempt the fish, how to bring one in without losing it, how to free myself from a snag.

When I'd catch one, no matter whether it was a tiny sunfish, a gluttonous puffer, or something actually admirable like that barracuda we had to pull up with a net, you were always glad for me.  You showed me how to remove the hook gently so as not to tear off the fish's lip.  You urged me to put the fish back into the water quickly so it could go on taking its chances with this life, and that was part of the fun too, watching it shoot off like a backwards firework, a flash and then nothing but the brown bottom of the canal.

I remember the time Fred couldn't get hold of a particularly slippery fish, how it slapped wildly against the sea wall, how when he finally got a rag around it, he labored too long to remove the hook, and when you came outside to help, because you wanted to spare my brother, because you wanted to change things, you took the still-gilled fish gingerly in your bear-sized hand and pushed it back and forth just under the water's surface, like a kid playing with a toy truck, attempting to give it life.  I remember my brother's tight little forehead, the way he squatted on the sea wall watching your hand, watching the fish, watching the water turn red with its blood, watching it float onto its side when you let go of it, how his own mouth opened and closed and opened soundlessly as he stared at the rigid gills and the broken scales, how you said, mercifully, "He's still in shock," while moving quickly to retrieve the fish, your hand pumping that fish through the water like a doctor pumping a chest with his fists, how you wanted what we wanted, how in your better moments, you loved us.

Open Letter #7, to my fundamentalist Christian aunt

This is what I know about you: you are a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a mother of two, a divorcée, a doctor, a teacher, a globe trotter, a breast cancer survivor.  You are also a self-proclaimed Christian.  You, of course, already know all that, but I'm making it clear because so much of what is known often goes unspoken, and when that happens, we tend to make assumptions.  Or at least, I make assumptions.  I made one recently, in fact, when I assumed you understood the nature of our relationship; I realized my mistake when I was surprised by your virtual friend-request.  I don't know why I've never been as straightforward with you as I'm going to be right now, though I've been forthright with you in conversations about other issues unrelated to our relationship as aunt and niece.  Perhaps I worried my words would fall on deaf ears and a heart so closed to understanding the truth that not even Moses could get through. 

We've certainly shared words before.  There was that time we had the heated debate about logging and owls, when you lamented the economic effects on families who depended on logging jobs that would be lost to preserve a forest full of endangered birds, and I said that the preservation of those owls' lives would mean the survival of our species because nature is our bedrock and we're all connected and that the loggers could log elsewhere or change vocations, and you wound up angry because you thought I cared more about animals than people and I wound up angry because I thought you had understood that God trusts us to care for the animals and the earth that sustains us.  

And there was that one time when something like ten family members were crammed into an 8-passenger SUV and someone (you?) said something about abortion, and I challenged your view of what it means to be human, and the car got so crowded with words and clenched muscles that I thought the doors would pop off.

Occasionally you and I exchange emails and text messages.  We even share a phone conversation every now and then.  And I guess I never knew what we were playing at with these interactions.  I suppose I was hoping we could be close because I know that despite what I'm about to share with you you're a good person.  And maybe you were hoping too that despite who I am we could be close.  But I'm tired of pretending for the family.  I'm tired of hiding from Grandma that her son molested her granddaughter, that he was not the father she thought he was.  I'm tired of not speaking up when someone in the family says something bigoted.  There are so many beam-filled eyes in the family, it's a wonder anyone can see anything at all. 

So I'll share with you now some fundamental truths about our relationship.

One: You and I are not close nor, without a miracle, will we ever be.

And two: This has everything to do with Jesus, God, and Love.  

To my understanding, you believe Jesus was the son of God and that he died for our sins; I believe he was the son of God too (in that I believe we are all God-incarnated), but I don't care if he came from Immaculate Conception or a one night stand or a rape or a fairytale, and I don't believe he died for our sins. I agree with you on this point: he was a prophet sent to teach the world about the true nature of love.  

Jesus preached the most sacred commandments--to love that which created us and to love each other (for we are all God's children).  He did not ask us to "tolerate" each other.  He did not say "force your beliefs on each other."  He did not decree "give some people rights and deny those same rights to others."

You presume that the Bible, which was neither written by Jesus nor by God, has all the answers in it.  You presume that the numerous interpretations of the language in which the book was originally written have been uncorrupted by what is lost in translation and by human beings and their own imperfections and biases.  You presume either to know that God did not create queer people or to assume that God did create queer people but damned their love in the same breath.  You presume to know what it means to be queer when God has made you a straight woman.  You presume to know God's design.

I'm gay and not even I have the audacity to pretend to know why I feel the way I feel about women.  I have ideas, but I don't state them as fact because I'm not God and I don't know.  What I do know is that it doesn't make sense for a god to create so much variation in sexual and romantic orientation and simultaneously demand that all people, no matter the way their hearts and bodies were designed, love and have sex exactly the same way.  And I don't see God stepping out of the heavens to correct the gay penguins or stop other homosexual animals from bonding.  Maybe they missed your memo about how God works.

I don't know why I'm gay, but I assume God made me this way for a reason--maybe to teach other people that love is boundless.  But the point is I don't need to know why, and I refuse to presume the Truth.  I know what's more important than knowing; I know what love feels like, what it is and what it is not.

For instance, I know it is not an act of love when you ask my straight sister about her romantic life but abstain from asking me.  I know it is not an act of love to tell another person, either overtly or covertly, that her love is a perversion.  I know it is dishonest, disrespectful, and unloving to misappropriate another person's love as "sin" just because you don't understand God's plan (or because you think you understand it).

I will not accept your friend request on Facebook because I anticipate reading posts about a god that has been whittled down to a force that gets squeamish at the notion of two people that have similar looking body folds loving each other; I can't stomach the presumption, hypocrisy, and judgment.  I will, however, continue to read your emails and email you back.  I will continue to talk to you on the phone.  I will even carry on playing board games with you and the rest of the family (some to whom this letter should be addressed as well) during our gatherings, and I will be as kind (but honest, yet) as I can in the moment.  I will continue doing these things because I know God is good and because I hold the hope that one day you will stop presuming you know how the Great Mystery works and start loving your fellow queer human beings the way Christ intended so that we can actually have a relationship based on something far more profound than tolerance.  Maybe God's waiting for you, too.

Open Letter #6, to the woman I love

I picture you walking through the rain, the bill of your cap pulled out far over your eyes, October's gold leaves carpeting the streets and sidewalks on which you tread, every step blurred by rain and royal colors and the fact that you left your glasses at home.

Last night I slept with the hat you used to wear to work every day, the one you let me keep when we broke up.  I snugged it into the space between my right arm and my body and would have turned to wrap the whole of me around it if not for a certain insistent cat curling into the curve where my left side tapers into my hip.  I wish I had kept your favorite sleep shirt too.

The other day, driving home, I suddenly needed you, and I thought I might do something crazy like find your car and fill it with millions of plastic googly eyes, the kind kids affix to puppet socks, the kind that make you laugh, small ones and big ones, with pupils of every color, all those plastic circles jiggling invisible grins, I'd pour them all in so when you opened your door, it'd be like one never-ending wink from me to you.  I thought I might go to the bank and ask for a hundred dollars in newly minted pennies, crack every roll on the lip of the driveway we sort of planned together before I moved out, spill the coins into a giant, shining heart, under which I'd place a note put together with notebook paper, glue, and cut out letters of the alphabet gleaned from advertisements from The Plum.  The note would say only this: Joey the Fish.  And you would remember our first weeks together and all our elaborate inside jokes and how easy it was.  I thought I might buy you a dozen sunflowers like the first flower I ever gave you, but multiplied, and leave them in odd places around the outskirts of your house so that you might not notice them at first but then you'd go to take out the recycling and meet a yellow-petaled head thrust between the can's blue lips like the happiest, strangest straw you ever saw, and later you'd find one glowing serenely in the washing machine like the promise of fresh socks and a new day.

It's the first time it's rained in months, with exception to one early morning a few weeks ago where it rained for a few minutes and nearly nobody noticed because it happened before most alarms had brought the day to anyone's attention.  The sky hasn't looked this forlorn since we were together, since the days of sad pizza and wet eyes and words heavy and tired as so many old pennies.  

You asked me if you were to ask me to marry you if I'd say yes.  But you'd been drinking.  And you'd been smoking.  You said it was always me, that I'd always been the one.  And I said no.  But I moved in with you because I loved you, because I knew you could get free of your garbage if you wanted to, because I believed you would.

But you weren't ready yet, and I got sick.  When you'd leave the house in the morning, I'd go through your laundry and sniff your clothes for the scent of smoke.  I'd thrust my hands into your pockets, my fingers seeking the plastic oblong shape of a lighter.  I'd go to the fridge and count your beers.  I'd check the recycling bin outside for empties.  When I didn't see any, I'd dig.  And when I'd find something, or even if I didn't--maybe especially if I didn't--I'd grab the key to the shed and look there, just in case.  Once I found a couple of cigarette butts beneath the shed.  Once I found some beneath the bush by the back porch, and there was that one time I found the old cottage cheese container hidden beneath the hood of the grill and filled with smoked cigarettes and the same gray sludge I imagined coated the delicate tissue of your lungs.

I'd wade through the bins in your closet, searching for secrets, searching for hidden cartridges for the electronic cigarette I hated so much.  In the kitchen, I'd grab your box of nicotine gum and spill the blister packs onto the counter by the sink and silently count, spending the rest of the day sick to my stomach because you were using more and more, because you were using, and I was still there, despite myself.  Sometimes the impulse was so strong, I'd poke through your backpack when you were in the bathroom or working in the yard.  I'd find cigarette stubs and lighters, an abundance of nicotine gum, lozenges, a whole pack of smokes.  What my hands found depended on what phase you were in.  

I couldn't sleep.  I was guilty.  I'd never been guiltier.  Because I was reading your text messages, too.  I was reading tiny snippets of truth that roiled in my stomach and made me feel wicked and foolish.  I burned like your cigarettes, like your cheeks after a few beers.  I hated myself for not having the strength to stop hoping all your lies would one day fall away from your lips like ash, all used up.  I wanted to stop resenting you.  I wanted you to stop resenting me for wishing you would drop your addictions.  I wanted you to keep your promise to me.  You'd said if cigarettes were my "hill to die on,"you'd quit, but all four seasons came and went, and I was still counting.

Gradually, the numbers took over my life.  I'd count how many times you'd go out and return with beer on your breath.  I'd count the seconds between when you'd locked the door in the morning and when you'd started up the car and when the gravel in the road had stopped crunching so I could get out of bed and tally gum pieces and bottles.  Eventually, the numbers got inside me.  I lost weight excavating your life.  Eight pounds total, and you'd comment on it, and I'd blame it on work stress, and almost everyone I knew half-believed I was anorexic, but I had a fever that was burning through me.  My heart ticked like a cabbie's meter so I could hardly keep up with my thoughts or my own breathing and was left to count the beats at night while you were sound asleep.  I called my sister and told her the number of chances you had left, which was one, and I asked her to promise to remind me of this figure if I ever called her in the future to tell her I was going to give you one more chance.

Finally, I counted the number of times you said we would go to couple's therapy, and I subtracted the number of times we'd gone from the number of times we'd promised to make an appointment and came up with a number that matched the number of notches I no longer needed in my belt.  And when, on our final night as a couple, we searched for a counselor together online and your conditions mounted and my patience waned, and somewhere in there the arguments about all the other things we couldn't reconcile came up, I gave up.  I didn't even have to call my sister because I knew we'd hit zero, and there was nothing left to count.

I moved out.  You wrote me to tell me you loved me, to apologize.  I didn't count the tears that fell as I read, and that was how I knew I was already getting better.  I started going back to Codependents Anonymous, and I promised myself I'd do the program right this time, for the first time in my five years as a self-avowed codependent.  I joined a step study group.  I told my friends and family I would not date for a whole year, that I would devote twelve months to myself and my recovery.

You and I tried to be friends.  Thirty days of separation, we'd agreed in an email, but when we met a month after the breakup, you gave me a list that left me sick with counting all over again:

number of alcoholic drinks and milligrams of nicotine in your life: zero

number of spiritual tattoos you'd acquired: one

number of times you'd jumped out of a plane since I'd last seen you: one

number of new, healthy people in your life: L, with L representing Lots

number of activities you'd tried that I'd always wanted to do with you: U, for Unknown but greater than zero

number of smiles on your face that I wished I had seen more often when we were together: I, for I can't remember because I was caught on the next two items in the list

number of times you said you missed me: zero

number of hugs you gave me: two, one at the start of our meeting, one at the end, both chaste

We planned to meet up again, but I had to cancel because I'd begun counting the days until I'd see you again, and all my hours were shadows next to the sun of getting to see you.  I wanted so badly to have you back in my life.  But I was angry, too.  I had been counting so long, and in the end, it had all amounted to nothing, and here you were, not even aware of the numbers, and your whole life was filling up.  Why had you waited until the space beside you in bed was empty?  I tried to count the number of times I'd told you your addiction bothered me, hurt me, was a deal breaker, but I lost track and the numbers prickled my skin.  I told you I couldn't talk to you anymore, that I needed space.

And after some fits and starts, you gave it to me.  Five weeks of silence between us.  The most we'd ever not talked in the approximate year and a half we'd known each other.  I focused on my own problems, and I went out with my friends, and I settled into a contentment I had not known when we were together.  I no longer had to worry about you or about us.  But I missed you, and soon the counting began again, but it was different this time. 

I began counting the number of times you'd watched a movie with me that I knew you hated but that I loved.  I counted the times you'd said something so beautiful to me that I'd ached at the words.  I counted your hands in my hair, your laughter in my ears.  I counted our quiet afternoons, our Sunday morning breakfasts and cups of coffee, our kisses, the way you looked at me whenever I wore a dress.  I counted the things we hadn't done together that you were now capable of doing.  I counted the days ahead of me, the weeks, months, and years.  I counted trips not yet taken, children not yet birthed, places not yet lived in.  I factored you into them.  

And then you wrote me an email, and I wrote you back, despite my concern, and our emails multiplied with our apologies and forgivenesses, and I felt X possibilities shooting up from the seeds of these new beginnings, and of course now I want to reach for you like a flower reaches for the sun, but I believe in promises, and I've had much practice counting, so I will live on meetings, and gold leaves, and emails while I endure the next few seasons without you, and I will sleep in a half-empty bed, one cat cinched to my left side, one hat snugged against my right, with countless thoughts of loving you warming me through the night.

Open Letter #5, to My Sixth Grade Teacher

You had short, curly hair that I remember as being a blondish gray, but the color never struck me so much as the overall effect, like you had bows for hair, and perhaps it was the subliminal notion that you were a gift that had me so taken with you.  It was your smile, too, because it was genuine and somehow classy, small but bright, like a 1940's Madge Evans smile.  And your steady blue eyes, delicately framed by your glasses, were a promise.  You were probably in your late 30's, and I didn't know how I felt about you, but I knew I liked you.

It's funny because even though I was eleven, old enough to actively make and retain memories, I don't remember much about that year, about what you taught us, I mean.  I can't even remember the easier things, like the way you held a pencil or a piece of chalk, or the way you greeted the class.  And I can hardly remember your voice, that fine auditory wave that guided me through so many lessons that year.  But I remember how you let me do a project on tadpoles, how proud I felt in front of the class as I encouraged everyone to come to the front of the room and take a look into the plastic container full of flickering, legless amphibians.  I spoke eagerly of the transformation they'd be going through, of the massive changes their tiny bodies would undergo in such a short time.  I stole glances at you the whole time, and there you were always, calmly smiling at me.

You thought I was gifted.  You told me I had a way with words, that I was special.  I loved you for thinking this, for telling me so matter-of-factly, for telling my mom and stepdad, neither of whom had ever told me I was special in any way.  You asked my parents for permission to have me tested, and I agreed, though when I asked what would happen if I passed, I was told I would be put with a group of students who were also advanced, and we would do more challenging work in another classroom, and that didn't sound good to me.  But I wanted to be special, so I took the test.  It was an IQ test, and I excelled with the language-related tasks but was stymied when it came to the left-brained problems presented.  In the end, I fell just a few points under the mark, and I was relieved.  We still had quite a good deal of the school year left to go.

You had a sort of honors club wherein high achievers in the class would get to take field trips with you.  I don't think they would allow this kind of thing today, but I absolutely loved it.  I remember how a small group of us went to your red brick townhouse in West Chester, the exclusive nature of it.  How you let me play with the antique phone on the wall, how the wooden floors squeaked and shone and reminded me of Christmas, how I realized you lived alone, how the feeling part of me that didn't yet have the knowledge or words for the feeling I felt for you wondered if you were like me.  You bought us pizza, and we all drank soda and ate and talked.  Sometimes you'd take us other places.  I remember the trip to the courthouse.  I don't think you knew what case was going to be happening that day because it was a rape case.  I remember the solemnity of that wooden-benched room, how still and quiet you were, how the rest of us sat close to you, quiet as mice, not saying how we felt, not knowing how to say it.

After sixth grade, I rarely saw you, but I made it a point to visit you when I graduated high school.  I found you in a hallway of the new middle school building, and you seemed tired out from all the newness, and I thought of your townhouse and the wood floors and I wondered if the florescent lights we were standing under had anything to do with the change, and I wanted something from you, too, but I didn't know what, and you wished me luck, and I left you, knowing finally, as I walked away, what it was I wanted.

I sent you a letter when I was a freshman in college, and to my surprise you wrote back.  I still have the letter, written on notebook paper, and am looking at it now.  Your handwriting is lacy, but not as fine and gauzy as a grandmother's.  It reminds me of the way you sat at your desk, your careful posture, the look you got on your face when you were grading at the front of the room while the class was hunched over their books, quietly reading.  You begin by saying what a nice surprise it is to hear from me, and you write about the snowy weather and "treacherous" driving and how teaching at the middle school compares to teaching at the elementary school.  There is whiteout beneath the whole of the word "elementary," and I wonder if you misspelled it the way I misspell cemetery because the second e sounds like an a.

You wrote the first half of the letter in red pen on March 4, 2003 and the rest of the letter in pencil on March 6th. Here, you tell me that college was one of the greatest times of your life, and in response to my having divulged my choice to major in creative writing, you proclaim, "Good for you!" And reading it now, I still feel your pride in me and in your job.  You go on to say that you read my letter to the class, I'm guessing to inspire them, and that "they were delighted that you bought a gecko."  I can't remember if I told you in my letter that I bought that gecko with my girlfriend, but I bet I kept that hidden from you; I can't imagine you would have read that part to a class of sixth graders.  You end your letter with this: "Take care and write soon, Love, Miss _____."

I don't think I ever wrote you back, and I have your letter but not your address because I lost the envelope.  You've retired, I know, because I've looked for you since graduating college and then graduate school, and I wonder if at some point I'll look beyond the dead-end results on Facebook so I can write you again, so I can give you this letter, so I can tell you that I loved you, too, and so I can freely admit that I don't know who you are but I know what you did for me and how you treated me; I want to tell you that you were one of the only sources of adult love in my life when I was eleven and that your smile and your belief in me were what kept me going when everything at home led me to believe I would never be enough. 

I guess I'm thinking about you a lot today because I'm an instructor now, and I teach reading and writing, as you did, but to college students, and today in the library a former student of mine caught me browsing through magazines in the stacks and told me how much I meant to him, how much my encouragement and disciplined manner helped him to become a better student.  And this came from a guy who did not pass my class.  But he'd worked hard, and I'd loved his spirit.  I'd pushed him because I'd wanted to see him go beyond himself; I'd wanted him to know he was capable, not just as a student or writer, but as a person.  So today, he told me he is taking the class again this term and doing well, and he looked proud, and I almost hugged him, but our eyes said enough, and he thanked me and told me he hoped to see me around.

And we probably will see each other around, at least until he graduates, and then who knows how long it'll be, or if I'll ever hear from him again, but I won't need to because I'll have today's conversation in the library, and I'll have your letter, and I'll know that I can be good to people because you were good to me, because you showed me what I was capable of, and you believed in me.  I'll never forget the love you gave me, Miss _____.  Keep smiling.

Open Letter #4, to my future reading students

The department wants me to teach you the difference between fact and opinion.  Here's your first fact: I don't know how to teach you this.  Here's your first opinion: Parsing statements into dichotomous categories like fact and opinion muddies truth and shuts down the mind.

I am supposed to tell you that a fact is knowledge or information based on real occurrences; that it is an event, thing, or experience that can be verified; that it is indisputable.  And you will say, as past students have said, "Oh, fact just means truth," like you've had an epiphany, and I will slam down my dry-erase marker on the desk and shout, "No, no, no!  Don't write that down!" because you will already be scribbling Fact = Truth as if it is this simple.

Then I will tell you all to write down the facts of what just occurred.  JUST THE FACTS.  You will look around the room nervously (which I will discern by the amount of white exposed in your eyes).  Some of you will lick your lips or clear your throat.  But after a few ticks, you will press your pens and pencils to paper because it is a fact that you want to show that you can do this or that you want to pass the class or that you have nothing better to do or that you generally do what you are told.

After a minute or so, one of you will say, "You slammed your marker on the desk."  You will be almost smug when you say this, and some of your peers will give you small smiles or nearly imperceptible nods because they wrote something similar, and others will already know not to trust me, and they will be staring not at you but at me, at the points of my teeth.

"Did I?" I'll ask, staring at you until you turn your eyes down.

But I will press you because I want the truth.

"How do you figure?"

At this point, no one will look at me.  I will have to play the nice-guy just so someone will say something.  "I'm not saying you're wrong.  I'm saying you gotta show your work."

"We all saw it!" one of you will say, trying not to shout.

You have just complicated matters.  You have no idea how much.

"Hold that thought," I'll say, rubbing my temple because the weight of our task is bearing down on me.

"Let me clarify," I'll say.  "Did I slam down the marker?  What does slam mean?"

The sound of a backpack unzipping will fill the air as one of you, probably an A-student, reaches for a dictionary.  "Slam," you'll read.  "To put, throw, or otherwise forcefully move so as to produce a loud noise."

"What's a loud noise?" I'll ask.  And then I'll stomp my foot, startling you.  "Is that a loud noise?"  I'll yank the projector screen down.  "Is that?"  I'll find an audio clip of a bomb going off and play it at maximum volume through the room's speakers.  "Is that?"  I'll bring the marker down on the desk again, and its sound will barely register against the bang of the bomb.

"Let's move on," I'll say.  And you will hate me for not giving you the answer, but we have to discuss what you think you saw.

"Does this marker exist?" I'll say, holding it out in front of me so everyone can see.

You are almost too annoyed to respond.

"Yes or no," I'll demand.

"Yesss," you'll hiss.

I will move the marker behind my back, slowly, like a sloppy magician.  "Does it exist now?"

You will think I'm being condescending or silly, playing peek-a-boo with you like you might play with your babies or your dog.

"Um, it's behind your back," one of you will say, smirking, and many of you will snicker.

"Does. It. Exist," I'll repeat, not deterred.

"Yes. It. Does," you'll mimic.  And one of you, anxious to move on, will say, "We saw it."

"But you don't see it now," I'll say.  "So how do you know it's real?  What made it real when I was holding it in front of you?  Was it?  What makes something real?"

"When it's outside of you, when you can see it," you'll say, and I'll tell you your love isn't real, and you'll backpedal but some of you will wonder if that's true, and I will have touched some childhood wounds, and you will forget the marker as you remember your mother or your father or someone else or the space where he or she should have been.

I will lecture you on Descartes.  I will remind you of classic children's stories, Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit.  Some of you will write frantically, trying to capture every word I say.  Others of you will still be thinking about love.  Some of you will be red in the face, angry that I would suggest love is not real, that I would put love in the same category as the word slam, as a stinky dry-erase marker.

"I'd like to move on," I'll write on the board with my questionably existent marker.  "Fact?  Or opinion?"

"Fact," you will say.

When I say nothing, you will revise your answer.  "Opinion."

When I stare at you blankly, you will grit your teeth, and the sound will be a fact and will express an opinion.

"Go home," I'll say.  "Watch the news.  Watch The History Channel.  Read some philosophy.  Meditate.  Talk to your children.  Play with your dogs.  Sit outside and let the air carry you forward and back.  We'll try again next class."

Open Letter #3, to an ex

You weren't interested.  But I allowed myself to believe you were because you called me, and your voice matched your body, strong and solid and colored by the sun.  You spoke of your ex with a longing you tried to hide but that waved in your eyes like a red flag.  I thought I could be what you missed.

You were safe.  You did not do drugs, did not drive recklessly, did not hit me.  You liked children and loved your family and enjoyed coffee and good food.  You had a car, an apartment, a degree, a plan.  I thought, because of this, I could love you.

What did I want from you?  I remember driving to a Halloween party with you, how the night spread itself like a cloak over the bridge we crossed, over the water below.  I knew I was not enough, and the paint covering my face gave me the courage to tell you to leave if you ever grew tired.  You assured me I did not bore you and I nodded, but I wanted to scratch off my makeup and tear off your hat so you could tell me you knew me and I'd believe it.

I scared you.  You said my anger felt like what the sun does to skin.  It could fill a room like light from a switch.  My anger was the flash before the bang, a jarring promise.  It barreled toward us like x-rays.  It settled in the bones.

Did you know you scared me, too?  Your anger sat between us like a grenade with its pin in, full of potential.  Sometimes I wanted to scream, "Just pull it already!" because I could feel you itching, because the thought of it going off, or worse, never going off, made my skin crawl.

I did not understand you.  Even after paging through the books on your shelves, tracing the faces in your photographs, and listening to your playlists on your iPod, I did not know you.  I only had a collage of titles and names, a catalog of aromas from the kitchen, a collection of glances and touches.  You played me Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" as if it was for me, but I never knew what you meant by it.  Were you trying to tell me we were too different?  Or were you saying we could make it work anyway?

I baffled you, too.  I wanted you to touch me like the moon touches the tide.  I wanted you to be the big spoon, but if I didn't fit my body to your back, you would leave me to curl up alone on my side of the bed, and you would sleep.  I read you poetry.  I kissed the palms of your hands.  I cried when you would not look at me as I came.  I cried because you could not come while I was searching your eyes for the shadows you never spoke of, the sadness and anger and fear I wanted to hold for you.

You did not miss me when I went on vacation.  I do not know if this is because you did not love me or because you felt I was suffocating you or because you did not trust me.  I did not trust you.  Which is why I read your diary and is how I know you did not miss me when I went away.  You wrote those words and I held them in my chest like a child might hold her breath with her pet dying in her arms, like if I said what I'd done, or if I said your secret aloud, I would lose you.  I read those words and did not leave; you never knew how much I tried to love you.

When you gave me your secrets, your shame, I failed you.  Your confession terrified me.  I could have run, but running's not my style.  I thought I could change you, or that you might decide to change on your own, given my discomfort.  But that's not love, and my fear made you nervous.  You saw that I did not accept you.  You knew my love was conditional, an oxymoron.

You cried and told me you wanted to end it, even as you held my hand, and this was the only time in our relationship that we felt exactly the same way, like two thirsty people in a desert stuffing their mouths with sand to make their insides match their outsides.

I don't know if you loved me.  I know that I wanted to love you, that I wanted to move past the parts of you that jumped out at me like ghosts, that even in the end I was too scared to walk through your halls, that I let the shadows mean more than your hand in mine, that your tears made me feel small.  I am sorry I was not brave enough to love you.  I am sorry I did not tell you how much you scared me; I thought you didn't care.  And maybe you didn't, but I still should have said something, if only so you might have understood you had nothing to be ashamed of. 

I guess I'm writing not to excuse myself but to say I hope you find her, the woman you can look in the eyes while making love because you see how she loves you back, how she would never ask you to change.

Open Letter #2, to my first crush

You had long brown hair that had a slight curl and that you often wore half-down, half-up, with the half-up part held back by a large clip-on bow because it was the late 80's/early 90's and that was the style.  When I think of you now, I think of you in our matching white-washed pink LA Gear shorts, the ones that came with that cool holographic square of plastic attached to the belt loop by a small circle of metal beads, the shorts we used to wear when we were dancing and doing cartwheels to Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" in your living room.  Or I think of you in your blue bathing suit, the one with the white polka dots.  I think of you teaching me how to dive, the long length of you sliding into that other world where we spent so much time weaving between each other's legs, playing Marco Polo and searching for treasure.

We were friends in first and second grade, maybe kindergarten too.  I can't remember, it's been so long, and time with you has always been bent by the shapes we made when your parents weren't watching, by our hands on each other's skin.  I remember your fingers were always cold, even when they passed me a hot bag of buttered popcorn those nights I stayed over and we watched Ghost or Sister Act, laughing with Whoopi, loving her smile and her braids, the way she shimmered like a rainbow.

I remember your breath on my neck: Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids and Ring Pops and the minty gum you always plied from your mom.  We liked to lie on the floor on the side of your bed furthest from the door.  The carpet was soft, and we'd prop a few pillows against your nightstand, yank our t-shirts up and over our heads, and begin.  Your whisper was warmer than your fingertips, which fell lightly on my shoulders, like snowflakes (but I didn't have that analogy then).  When you laid on me, your ribs filling the gaps between mine, the balloons of our diaphragms pressing toward each other like static electricity, I felt as if I'd been hungry without knowing it, and I was grateful the way a fed body is.

Do you remember the hard press of the faded red picnic table in your backyard?  I can still feel its fists in my spine, can still recall the starry ponds of your eyes floating above me, the way you squeezed them closed when I pushed up against you, how our legs met like two halves of a page that when opened reveal a finger-painted butterfly.

Maybe it began with the magazine we discovered in a littered parking lot as we peered over the edge of the bed of my mother's truck.  You might remember how my mom had left the Nissan running while she disappeared into a dingy building at the edge of the small lot, how exhaust swirled down around the glossy pages, mixing with the smell of vomit rising from the greasy green dumpster a few feet away.  I remember worrying she would come back before I could grab it.  And then, after my sneakers had hit the glass-dusted pavement, after the Reader's-Digest-sized magazine had filled my hands, I feared she'd catch me before I could conceal it.  Do you remember how I sat on it when she came out?  How red our faces were?  We paged through all those exquisite shapes on the drive home, our backs against the window separating the cab from the bed, my mother oblivious to the fire starting in the back.

Your mother was also clueless.  At least, for awhile.  I wonder how we slipped, what led her to fling open your door that day.  I remember how you jumped away from me like you'd touched a hot stove, how we scrambled for our clothes and the fire burned in our cheeks as she told us we would go to hell.  I remember her finger pointing, her voice as sure as the white dress you wore to your First Communion.  I remember the wafer on my tongue, how it took all the spit from my mouth, how hard it was to swallow.

I remember the day you slapped my face in your bedroom and how we both cried afterwards.  You had never touched me like that.  I can't remember if you hit me because I'd said I wanted to go home or because I'd refused to do something you wanted me to do.  You were spoiled, and I suppose you weren't often denied.  I remember how you begged me not to call my mom, how you begged me to stay.  Your mom materialized at your bedroom door, and when I, holding my hot cheek, told her I wanted to go home, she looked glad.

That is my last memory of you before my parents divorced and my mom moved my brother, sister, and me across the country.  It's been over twenty years since we last talked, but I want you to know I haven't forgotten you.  I see your profiles on Facebook and MySpace, see how you've lightened and straightened your hair, how you've caked your soft lashes with mascara so that it looks like you're wearing spiders.  You graduated high school but never went to college, and all of your pictures show you in bikinis and costumes that show off your cleavage and tight midriff.  You give duck face in half the shots and stick out your tongue in nearly all the others.  Are you what would have happened to me if I'd had your mother?  Are you happy?  Was I just a phase?  I hope you still worship the sun, I hope you are still quick to laugh, I hope if you ever think of me you remember who you were before you knew the world could turn on you for burning so bright.

Intro to Open Letter Series & Open Letter #1, to Secret

Typically, the open letter is one of protest or appeal and is addressed to a single person or group while also being meant for the public's eyes.  I'm going to twist the definition for my purposes as I begin an open letter series intended to expose my secrets; my letters will not be a means of criticism so much as a  venue for addressing personal truths.  It is my hope that these letters will not only release me from Secret's grip, thus empowering me, but will also encourage my readers to relinquish their own secrets, to face their own patchwork lives and perhaps boldly uncover the truth of who they are.

* * * * *
Secret,

You are older than mummy dust, fresher than a stranger's blood on the evening news.  You are dark as Watergate, bright as the hydrogen bomb's panoramic flash, innocuous as who ate a cookie before dinner, as dangerous as an assumption about a sanctified robe.  You're glib as the paparazzi's snap and tight as a thong on a hot day.

You are an apple, a box, The Ultimate Question.

You stir the nerves.  Truly, I'm not sure what's worse--keeping you or sharing you, knowing you through someone else or being kept from you by someone else.  You drive me crazy.  Still--

I used to love you.

Well, not exactly I guess.  I never trusted you, all wrapped up and aloof, unapologetically smug or afraid of your own shadow.

But I appreciated your smile.  (Not your shit-eating grin, but your silly, toothy crescent mouth, how your lips would part like the Red Sea for Moses, how your whispered words filled the funnel of my ear.)

Sometimes you danced inside me like raindrops on a secluded mountain lake.  We trembled together, waiting for someone to ask a question that would reveal you.

You kept me safe, I thought, all these years.  We've known each other for a long time, and despite your comings and goings, we've always managed to keep in touch.  But now I'm not so sure you're good for me.  In fact, I'm not sure you ever really kept me safe so much as you kept me from being myself.  So I'm letting you go.  It'll be slow and possibly embarrassing and maybe even painful.  Yet I know at some points I'll be laughing.  Hell, you'll laugh too.

Of course, it's going to take a lot of open letters to cut our ties.  But I know you won't mind me sharing you with the world because a significant part of you has always loved hide-and-seek (you invented it, after all!), and I suspect the reveal is almost always more electrifying than the dark space beneath the bed where dust bunnies are your only company.  So get ready to shock, to sadden, to anger, to entertain.  We'll work together until you burn out, until you're nothing but ash and the smudgy memory of unkept promises.

Let's NOT keep this between us,
Carol