There is a letter,
Perhaps the kind not meant to be read,
Waiting somewhere
For me
Perhaps never to be read
Sitting at the table with a
Cigarette
I am too tired to make food
But when I get in bed
I am too hungry to sleep

The sickness clings to my chest
In the measured wheeze of my breath
As I stuff my face further into the pillow
Drowning the phone-song in fabric
Again and again
But I will not sleep yet.

It is my birthday-
The one that means something.
I am opening the new year
Like a letter
Unreadable,
But in front of me
Nonetheless.

And as our new love,
Or new version therof,
Unfolds its pages slow
Like years in contradiction
I want nothing
More than something poetic
To liken it, something
In the style of Li-Young Lee:
Secret, dark and small-
A beauty of the discreet ache

But I have no such description
To give
I am melodramatic at best
Too quick to admire
Too slow to forgive
It is only somehow appropriate
To say:
Your love for me
Is like a Li-Young Lee
Poem, a letter I will never read
A gift never meant to be recieved-
Secret, dark and
Small enough to say
Everything, everything that is
Worth saying.