Into the Teeth of the Wind

E.V. Noechel

Lost Letters

You wrote me lost
letters. I housed them
in a box that smelled like mold
and the things you keep
in attics. I’d touch your hand-
writing and it felt kinetic
like the thin short hairs
that stand up on necks like quills,
the paper warped from what you wrote
in the rain, pits and valleys obliterating half-
words, and things you chose
not to say, like I never did. You
spelled badly, dropping I’s
and E’s like cigarette butts
flipped into sidewalk puddles.

Later, meaning now, a letter arrives
pelted with dried rain. You wrote through fog
on a ferry from wherevr you are
working now to wherever you are
living now. It says, I think of you. Still.
I send one back, a hello there, how
are you I am fine, doing this doing
that, what about you? letter,
and the I’s and E’s are all there
but the letter’s lost everything I try to write
as if it were sealed in wax, the water beads
in small, insular drops. I still don’t
know how to write the mist that soaks
through paper, the vibrations of steel
underfoot, and the way I think
of you like you do.