that time I was secret erotic pen pals with Emily Dickinson

Dear E,

Hopefully this isn't strange.

Okay, I know it is.

I found your p.o. box on your website and wanted to write you.

I read your poems after we met.

I didn't remember you reading them at that coffee shop. I kept staring at your skin and wondering how soft it was.

I was the girl in the front row, wearing green and gray. I had a sunflower behind my ear. One of those plastic ones you'd buy at tourist shops.

You were beautiful up there.

Sometimes I want to do the same. Jump on the stage and scream for hours.

Thanks for reading,
A


Dear A,

I remember you. Freckles right?

I thought about mapping them. Maybe finding constellations on your cheek.

That's a bit weird though. It's easier to write than to speak.

I shake every time I go onstage. I scream inside, at the terrible monster who tells me I am failing. That I am a mistake.

Write me again.
E


Dear E,

So secret pen pals? Who only hold conversations on crisp white paper?

Maybe it's because you're Colombian.

Yes I followed your Facebook and Twitter and anything else with your name on it.

Your bio says your mother was from there and that she died but not how. It says you never graduated from college which makes me think you're a rebel.

I tried to get rid of my freckles when I was younger. I rubbed lemon juice on my skin until my eyes stung.

A

Dear A,

Send me a picture of your thighs. I am strange today.

E

-

Dear A,

I appreciated the size of the picture. No Polaroid for you. No, in comes a rolled poster to cover my wall.

You are strange too.

I have drawn a house from the freckles on your inner thighs. And I wonder what sort of house you live in. Perhaps a basement apartment or a ramshackle cabin.

I've lost my home. It gets harder to build a new one each time.

E


Dear E,

You must be trying to guess my age with that drivel about my pale thighs. I could be a ghost.

I'm twenty-five. Yes, you are older but I am no spring either.

I live in a tiny house on the back of my friend's property. She had it built out of a desire to rid herself of possessions. Then she said it got weird.

It's quiet here. The walls are so thin that I shake when it's windy.

A



Dear A,

You shouldn't fall in love with ghosts. We like haunting too much.

I can see the ocean here. Smell the salt and deeper things. I have sent you a pink shell that I found near the shore. It was dark and gray, the sun only beginning to come out.

I feel it pulling me. I am magnetized.

My children say I am turning into a gargoyle.

Ahh but I would be a very attractive stone. Would you lay offerings at me feet?

E

Dear E,

I know you're not going to read this. I know you can't.

I have the shell and the letters you've written me.

I am moving my tiny house nearer to where you died. I want to scream at the sea that swallowed you. Though they said you threw yourself at it.

But that's how it always goes. Never the ocean's fault. Only the woman and the swimsuit.

Love,
A