thispresentsojourn

Dear Madeleine,

Here is an empty room, (but less the emptiness) years of hardwood cigarette stench in the glossy tops of tables; a red light sparkles stern in the shadows, and the overture of yells for a band who hasn’t played here in years — it burns and sticks.

I wouldn’t have known the difference of some oak tree branch squealing in the friction of glass, an eloquent sweep through the midnight caught up by the pane and your voice. Centered, provocative, magenta-skin voice.

Can you believe these are the sorts of things we wrote to each other? Assume it’s par for that year’s course. And when you take all your cues from (or the breadth of your personal reality is defined by) a movie, there can’t be more to expect. Even though — terribly — expectations were all we owned.

As it goes, though, the definitions move from wide to small as our experiences go from few to many, and you know that if I do by now. You’ve always known things a few years before me whether or not I could (I never could) admit to them.

I hope you are well in Denmark. I’m still in the town I grew up, and everything is not different. I’m stowed in the loft of a bar where we once swept the billiards.

Winter is on it’s way, however slowly and playfully.  Wrapped tightly in a black trenchcoat I bought in SoHo, I can’t help but guess each of these seasons from now yet will be subsumed by the head of the one we knew.

I still wear the scarf you knit and I’m damn proud of it.

Archie