Strawberry Letter 29

Dearest,

Some amputees deal with an ailment known as "phantom limb". They're so used to living with all of their parts that when one is taken away from them they continue to operate and act as if the piece was never gone, until they try to use the limb and find nothing. It can cause great shock and dispair and often delays the recovery of the patient as they continually have a hard time getting used to the absence over and over again.
I suppose I've been used to you being gone for some time now, that I live each day assuming that you are there with me. I feel just like everyone else and go about my daily tasks. Then I reach for you beside me at night and find nothing were I expected to feel your warm and familiar body. I think I'm over the initial shock of this occurance but hate to think that I'll ever fully recover to the notion of your absence. That I'm different from all of the others that have full use of all their parts, some of whom take it for granted. I could seek out a prosthetic but know that my body would reject something that didn't have you coursing through it. I'll continue to nurse this wound and hope that you're keeping yourself on ice until the time is just right for reattachment.

Love,
Me

Strawberry Letter 27

Hello my love,

I thought about you this weekend on a sky like mushroom soup. I reminded a pair I know that umbrellas work better for two if you link arms. It's the only way that you can keep pace in the rain. I wondered where such a golden nugget of knowledge had come from. I finally settled on the paper pink notion that you had given me that tip long ago as a way of keeping your smile in my thoughts on rainy days. It's like how I keep your favorite drink around for a nip and your brand of smokes hidden in my cupboard. It seems silly but I just want you to know that a vanilla sight comes to mind every time I open a drawer looking for a hammer and see those cigarettes with the cellophane keeping them fresh until you come over, wet like a cat in the drink with no umbrella, and find that in your panic to outrun the heavens you dropped your last two sticks in a quickly racing mini stream. Though we both know you should quit, you really needed one especially after all that is bursting from your head to tell me. And I'll listen with a sweet ear while I turn the heat up just a notch to dry out your shoes by the vent. I'm clueless as to how many cigarettes are in a pack but I look forward to stretching out their lifetime across those days that may seem insignificant as they go by but are expensive to cash in later when they're gone.
I sat through a late show of the film AMELIE wishing that I could turn to you at all the right moments and appreciate that I had found you like the heroine finds her nerdy hero after years of not knowing he was always there. I wish that the theater had invested in those fancy seats where the arms come up so that I could lay in the nook of your arm as our faces flickered romantic reflections like a a slide show spun forward to catastrophic speeds. Your heart sounds like a projector sprocket running and it lulls me to calm. I imagine the film being shown from your gigantic eyes. In Cinemascope, of course.
I continue to look for you in the faces I see everyday and wish that you would hurry up and figure things out already so that I could wind these clocks again. Their blue faces would light up like a lightning bolt caught in gooey molasses and quietly tick away our time together again. Until that day I just continue to tell time by the warm sun and fall asleep in the night when the waiting for you turns me to a million drops of water cascading down to clean the slate and start over anew.

Until the next drop,
Keith

Emotionally Charged Towel #12

Another trip down memory lane, courtesy of 18 year old Keith and some spring cleaning. I think I like this poem more than the last story I put up. Maybe I'm just being a hopeless romantico...

You want to call him PRETTY
But you just know that he'd laugh
At your uncreative choice of adjectives
But there's just no other way to describe him

CUTE doesn't do him justice
He's way past that level of playground good looks
Tether balls and cootie tag spring to mind before his flawless face does

You could call him HANDSOME assuming
That fashion catalog male models wouldn't take offense
At your gall for comparing their stylish Armani tastes
To his penchant for clothes that don't always have to fit him snug

You could easily call him SEXY but
There's just much more to him than that
Though he gives you those thoughts
That shake around your insides

You want to call him PRETTY
But you know he'll laugh again
With visions of poofy hostesses
All dressed to the nines
And tens and twenties too

You'll understand his not understanding
Your need to find a word to explain
All of the ways he makes you feel
When it's just the two of you together
And that PRETTY doesn't quite cut it
So you want to call him PRETTY
And you probably will
But when he's not around
And you keep writing dumb poetry about him
You know you'll want to call him PRETTY
But you should just call him BEAUTIFUL

Emotionally Charged Towel #11

I was looking through some old writings of mine from my younger years and I found this sad little tale. A few months away from my 30th birthday, I couldn't help but remember how I felt when at wrote it at 18, and if I'd changed any since then. Forgive the dramatics it was high school baby...

Once upon a time there was a boy. This boy was the happiest most doggone, whipsmart little boy that ever walked this planet. One day, without expecting to, the boy fell in love. He fell in love so deep that he thought he'd never get out, and he was right. He'd built himself a pit so far into the ground that the strongest ropes in the world couldn't pull him out. So he climbed for months and months until, miraculously, he finally emerged out of the hole he'd been stuck in for so long. When he got out, he ran away, promising never to fall in love ever again. So he kept his eyes cautiously to the ground but he couldn't help looking for love and always falling into places that were way too deep for him. It wasn't that he minded the fall, he just didn't like getting in over his head and perhaps looking was the problem. So he decided to stop looking and just go about his business and maybe, when he wasn't looking, he'd accidentally fall somewhere that he actually fit comfortably in and felt protected.
But everyday he continued to fall, and fall hard, Never quite landing on his feet so that his body felt sore all over. One day he plunged head first into another deep hole and landed with a familiar thud. He didn't know why he had stepped into this hole but it almost felt like he had to. There was almost a safety, a comfort, inside this new place but it went against the boy's better judgement and he tried not to linger too long but couldn't help it. The typical climbs out of all of his previous falls was always tough and harder than he liked. But this fall was different. He didn't feel like he did after getting out of all the other places. He didn't feel alone like he usually did, he felt a steady peace. So instead of heading up the rocky wall towards the light he'd seen so often he merely settled into a corner of this new and inviting space and went right to sleep.