Open Letter

Dear Spiders,

I hope you had a nice time eating my feet last night.

Love,

Leigh

POEM FOR MY BEST FRIEND

With tribute to Dorothea Lasky

Katharine Tillman, you are my best friend.
If I am Anne Shirley, you are Diana Barry.

You have saved me from the orphan asylum.
You have been the hand that smooths the waters

over the rocky coast of my island. In the fog,
you are my lantern. We have braved many shy springs

together, underdressed and unprepared for such a wind
to rock our fragile boats off course, but I have loaned you arm

socks, and we have made it through the night.
My love is no accident. You wear a black dress

and I love you, you wear a tweed jacket and I
love you. I love you even when you lose your valuables

and we have to go back to the restaurant/museum/
laboratory and spend all night looking for them.

We both know my fear of sea creatures, but
I would allow myself to be devoured by a whale

if it meant God would spare your life. My love
is no accident, and neither is the fact

that our lives have converged so close to the West
Side Highway, the Hudson, New Jersey, America.

To be alone in a place so big there are songs about it
would be lonely, but I have never been without you.

And even without you, I am with you,
for we share the thinking space of sisters.

We share a love of the divine mysteries of life.
We want to understand all that we do not, and

in moments of clarity we both realize
how impossible our search is, how small

our place in the universe. At least my small place
is next door to your small place. For even if your

small place is in Portland and mine is in Brooklyn,
or Alamogordo, or my mind, if I walked far enough

for long enough, I would reach you. I want to buy
stars and name them after you. Stars we can visit,

like islands. I want to be your height so that we see
the same vistas. Katharine, you are my heart,

my ears, my eyes, the sun in Greenland. You
are a reason for waking even in the deepest dark.

Remember when my blog used to have content? Ohmigosh, me, too! Ben is supposed to be here, but he's an hour late. I fell asleep on the terrace with my head on my arm, and there's a big red mark on my forehead. I am super cool. If he doesn't get here soon I'm going to have to make seitan fajitas and play Scrabble all by myself. Do you know what are the best things in life? The Jackson Five, raspberry spritzer, sisters, sunlight, and waking up before your alarm goes off so you can just lie there and listen to the birds. Is going to so many yoga classes turning me into a crazy person? Writing a novel is so so hard.

Experiments in sobriety

Dear Crate & Barrel,

Please stop sending me catalogs so I can stop wishing I was getting married and/or buying a house.

Love,

Leigh

*

If I make it through the night, I'll be four days alcohol free. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal to anyone, but I've gotten into a bad habit. Surprisingly, drinking half a bottle of wine every night for a month doesn't improve your mental faculties! In fact, you might find yourself crying uncontrollably outside the Let Them Eat Cake in the Midway Airport! You might compose yourself and try to order an ice coffee, only to be told, "Just to let you know, we just put the hot coffee in a cup of ice"!

*

I said I was going to London and Edinburgh but I changed my mind and canceled my bookings. I really want to go to New Mexico. A surprising number of people, especially my blood relatives, are freaking out about this, like I'm missing out on an incredible opportunity. I'm pretty sure London will still be there in a year. All I really want is a car and a road and a vista and maybe some fish tacos and solitude. That's a vacation.

Vacation

I'm home in Lombard. So far, I've gone to the new water park once, visited the new modern wing of the Art Institute, seen Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, played The Sims for approximately ten hours, watched a Michael Jackson interview, gone for a long drive across Schaumburg with Beth while listening to dance radio stations at a very high volume, written two or three pages of The Book*, and danced at a club that had a VOLLEYBALL COURT near the parking lot.

* Revising is 100x worse than writing. I can't wait until it's over, and there's a part of me who fears it may never be.

Robert Bly Sunday

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

He cried, ""You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life

Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

Joe Meno Saturday

"An apple could make you laugh: You are so charming. On our lunch, we find our way along the crowded boulevard. You stop abruptly and pluck two green apples from someone selling them on the street. You look at them and decide they are in love, these two apples. You make them whisper to one another. You make them dance: The kind of dances they do are dainty, spontaneous. At the end of the dancing, the apples get married in a little ceremony. After the two apples kiss, you and I laugh. It'll be okay going for the two apples, they will get on fine, anyone can tell. Together, we walk back to the office and hate each other for how easily we can laugh about this."

- "An Apple Could Make You Laugh"