letter from jones street

January 7, 2001
Dear Philipp,

Forgive me. I’m drunk again.
The whiskey is holding time still.
Even the guitar strings go on thrumming
without the hand.
Where to find you?
You told me you will be singing
in the one red room
in all of pale Germany.
Tonight I stand in my front yard,
wind lifting my scarf like birds’ wings,
and anxiously raise the nets of silence,
listening for your voice to slip through
and bend me down under the branches of the maples.

But I am lonely, Philipp, and cannot
bear all the beauty in this life.
My eyes have been pinched shut by a star,
and there is dark in me. The colors have closed.
You, Philipp, are a bird who can still rise up,
cross oceans, find me in these miles of fields.
Pull me even with the lines of your body.
Fasten me to you.
I, who will never be brave,
who will never be pieced together,
will wait with you for the morning storm
that will blow the burdens off our shoulders.