September in Letters by Alexandra Box
It was like being at the direct half-point of a novel, vulgarity and binate optimism, not yet ready for the real fuel of the narrative. Looking down at my hands, I name each vein that is bound to betray me as I take something or some shape into my grip. Daydreaming about my grip around an enamel-slotted spoon, I trace it on the soil to mimic the triangulation of my interior, rushing from one point to the next. I remember all of the times I earnestly wished to disrobe in the wrong place. I remember all of the times I proudly announced my wishes to disrobe, and was lying. I remember all the times I arrived at my great-grandmother’s and great-great-uncle’s door only to encounter them proudly disrobed.
I write a letter today. I write a letter that is full of below-ground thoughts, although it may not be read as such, as the words are fair and sweet. In the letter I describe how the water I watch is flattened by the breeze and how I had a dream about the woman I write to the night before, taking place on a boat and, of course, her mother was present. I refuse to analyze why my padded-in-romance dreams always have the mother present in some subtle way. I also refuse to smell this rotting fish any longer, so I get up and leave this air, but lie about my whereabouts in the letter. One must take any opportunity to flatter the scene. What I leave out of the letter is an exercise in heart-edit. The water-flattening breeze was romantic until it was not, and it began to serve the rotting flesh of that sunbathing fish.
In my dream log, I wrote down “dream boat”, and these two words will serve as my entertainment for the day. It felt both abridged enough to adhere to the happenings in the dreamworld and androgynous enough to remedy my bruised gay complex. Now I sit to write again, this time among the lacerated blades of crabgrass, crisped and browned by the sun. I see the stream still— green, grey, and even golden at certain hours of the afternoon. Today my flame for writing will be awfully-worn berets, grandmother’s leather belts, shoes being misnamed, male martyrdom, and scratch and sniff money. I can hear the cows across the water, speaking and stirring.
Filling the lines of her letter with meaningless but romantic observations, taking her on the ride that this summer has been. A soul ride. I have been far and she has been near. I conclude with how discreetly captive she has kept me— tied down, held down, never, but rather captivated by what she hides and what she reveals to this world. In this, I am captive, beyond the point where I may let myself out, so maybe I am kept, though I pass through many using my own restraints. I have many strange wonderings while I write, I leave them out too, like how many types of pipes are in her house. Certainly all of them are out of sight, though she is in the basement-renter class, finally. Playing rich has a harsher expiry in that city.
It is true, I will miss being granted the opportunity to emasculate, to wear garments that outdate my great-grandmother in bed, to be the keeper of (his) secrets, and to spew coded language at the oarsman. I became lengthened in heart and it was my most prized local numbing agent. Although I stand knee-deep in the low-tide sludge of myself so suddenly now, I keep my margins both kept and free.