Letter from the Ground Floor

I'd like to tell someone something about myself for instance

the girl on the steps when I said It's hot today I like it

when it's hot and she said Oh you do well not me so much

Of course there are other things too some relating

to the dead who stick around a lot of the time anyway especially

at night when I'm sitting beneath the Chinese floor lamp

scribbling things down that sound like their voices

How can I confide in them when they know everything already

I would like a sister not that I've had one though I can see

us sitting at a table drinking coffee our heads bent close

I'm full of love I love the world I'm telling her and she says Oh

my goodness because she can see right through me how blood pumps

through the four chambers of my heart threatening the membranous scrim

of my well-known birth defect the borderline atrial septal aneurysm

I pledge myself forever to transparency

even if I am still sitting here alone like always

not in a good mood not in a bad one either

the sun pouring through the window scrubbing

the walls to the color of milk that luminescence

In the Bible people were lonely though they could wait

for a visitation an angel fluttering down to hear them

or even better yet to whisper a secret in their ears