Postcard Coaster

Postcard Coaster

In handwriting worse than normal, she
scrawled down a few sentences hastily conceived,
hastily transcribed, hesitantly dropped into a
mailbox I probably know.

As I open my own, numbered fourteen,
the key jamming as it normally does, the
current created by my swinging the door
catches the card and causes its fall, onto
the cement, sand from last winter still resident
in its cracks.

I read the address, the sentences, and
by the time I reach my apartment door, a
wave has resided, and it’s dead ink on paper,
I try to think to myself, knowing that that
is not yet true, that this is still a thing
to grasp, to which to cling, to read
word by word, letter by letter, pen stroke
by pen stroke, breath by breath by
heavy breath.

It isn’t until the whisky is watered down
that I note what the postcard depicts:
a waterfall which together we’d seen twice
and by the side of which, despite my
suggestion, we did not make love.