Love Letters to the Dead(3)

I am looking out the window now in her cold house, from under the rose quilt, to find the first star.

I wish you could tell me where you are now. I mean, I know you’re dead, but I think there must be something in a human being that can’t just disappear. It’s dark out. You’re out there. Somewhere, somewhere. I’d like to let you in.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Elizabeth Bishop,

I want to tell you about two things that happened in English today. We read your poem, and I talked in class for the first time. I’ve been in high school for two weeks now, and so far I had been spending most of the period looking out the window, watching the birds flying between phone wires and twinkling aspens. I was thinking about this boy, Sky, and wondering what he sees when he closes his eyes, when I heard my name. I looked up. The birds’ wings started beating in my chest.

Mrs. Buster was staring at me. “Laurel. Will you read?”

I didn’t even know what page we were on. I could feel my mind going blank. But then Natalie leaned over and flipped my Xerox to the right poem. It started like this:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

At first, I was so nervous. But while I was reading, I started listening, and I just understood it.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.



Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.



I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.



I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.



—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I think my voice might have been shaking too much, like the poem earthquaked me. The room was dead quiet when I stopped.

Mrs. Buster did what she does, which is to stare at the class with her big bug eyes and say, “What do you think?”

Natalie glanced in my direction. I think she felt bad because everyone was looking not at Mrs. Buster, but at me. So she raised her hand and said, “Well, of course she’s lying. It’s not easy to lose things.” Then everyone stopped looking at me and looked at Natalie.

Mrs. Buster said, “Why are some things harder to lose than others?”

Natalie had a no-duh sound in her voice when she answered. “Because of love, of course. The more you love something, the harder it is to lose.”

I raised my hand before I could even think about it. “I think it’s like when you lose something so close to you, it’s like losing yourself. That’s why at the end, it’s hard for her to write even. She can hardly remember how. Because she barely knows what she is anymore.”

The eyes all turned back to me, but after that, thank god, the bell rang.

I gathered up my stuff as quickly as I could. I looked over at Natalie, and she looked like maybe she was waiting for me. I thought this might be the day that she would ask if I wanted to eat lunch with her and I could stop sitting at the fence.

But Mrs. Buster said, “Laurel, can I talk to you a moment?” I hated her then, because Natalie left. I shifted in front of her desk. She said, “How are you doing?”

My palms were still sweaty from talking in class. “Um, fine.”

“I noticed that you didn’t turn in your first assignment. The letter?”

I stared down at the fluorescent light reflected in the floor and mumbled, “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I didn’t finish it yet.”

“All right. I’ll give you an extension this time. But I’d like you to get it to me by next week.”

I nodded.

Then she said, “Laurel, if you ever need anyone to talk to…”

I looked up at her blankly.

“I used to teach at Sandia,” she said carefully. “May was in my English class her freshman year.”

My breath caught in my chest. I started to feel dizzy. I had counted on no one here knowing, or at least no one talking about it. But now Mrs. Buster was staring at me like I could give her some kind of answer to an awful mystery. I couldn’t.

Finally Mrs. Buster said, “She was a special girl.”

I swallowed. “Yeah,” I said. And I walked out the door.

The noise in the hallway changed into the loudest river I’ve ever heard. I thought maybe I could close my eyes and all of the voices would carry me away.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear River Phoenix,

May’s room at my dad’s house is just like it always was. Exactly the same, only the door stays closed and not a sound comes out. Sometimes I’ll wake up from a dream and think I hear her footsteps, sneaking back home after a night out. My heart will beat with excitement and I’ll sit up in bed, until I remember.