Ian 6

Ian,

And I’m thinking now that all my hundred letters will get written after all.  Sirens distant sound like cries from some wounded animal.  I once read that every sound that gives us chills mocks some predator we are trained to biologically react to.  In that case, my predecessors must’ve been threatened by a high-pitched and mechanical beast.  I twitch and turn my head, with all the dogs.

All the hundred of these I have in my blood make me feel like we’ve been doing this a long time.  The heavy dark of you reaches a hand out, palm up, the pad of your index finger runs along the length of my forearm where I’m turning to see the space behind you I think you must be calling from.  The sound of a lighter across denim, and I look down.  When did it get so dark in here, Matthew?  The kind of close dark of the anatomy of a sleeping bag, or a small and shared bed.  Some rough lining, some sweat gathering at the temples, some ignorance of the cold world, some low muttered apologies.  You could blow out the candle, I’m done reading.  

I was afraid of you before, but I’m not now.  

You bring a blue light into me, a dark one, where I curl inside the space it leaves and feel a closed sense of you nearby, in the narrow bed.  I want to ask if you missed me.  Did you miss me?  I didn’t miss you.  You were always here, behind all the rocks, and running low under the blood in the ditch by the train tracks.  I’m closest to you when I don’t try to think, but live.  You must be an animal.  You must be the same kind of animal I am.  You might’ve always been here.

Love,

Annik