Love Letters to Annette
Annette whispered
on her birthday,
on a sprung Murphy bed
in her apartment,
that my letters
(disguised as chronicles)
seduced her heart.
No one had ever written her letters.
Stamps from Mexico, France, Turkey,
crinkled, airmail envelopes the color of blue sky
helped out, too.
That night I gave her
a gift of a pewter hip flask inscribed:
For Your 19th Nervous Breakdowns
It was the first and only time
thousands of love letters actually worked as intended.
(I still haven’t stopped writing them.)
Then love letters to Annette didn’t work,
and love emails never work.
Her mother asked me to assist with an intervention for untreated mental illness.
I did; the intervention didn’t take.
We disappeared on one another,
but I had more ability to stay visible.
I didn’t.
She’s homeless now,
schizophrenic,
shaved head,
toothless,
living on the streets of Las Vegas.
I have no way to mail her
a love letter
she surely deserves,
might even comprehend,
that I desperately want to write,
but would make no difference
in a lost life,
of unfulfilled promise,
ripped away by the cruel vagaries of evolution
that didn’t inflict the right people.