Love Letters to the Dead

“Oh.”


I reached out and put my arms around his body. It was then that I could feel that the moths in him, with their wings so paper-thin, will never be near enough to the light. They will always want to be nearer—to be inside of it. It was then that I could feel the lost thing in him. I wanted to put my hand on his chest, against his heart, and touch all the way inside his beating. I wanted to find him. But he stepped back, and his bottom lip, crooked just a little to the left, straightened out.

I felt like there were a million questions and answers and questions all stuck in the back of my throat. But I couldn’t speak from everything being stuck there. I stopped.

“Sky?”

“What?”

I looked at him. And I meant everything. “Nothing,” I said, and then I paused. “Those flowers are going to be really pretty.” The cold night sent a shiver up my spine, and we kissed again.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear John Keats,

Today we got our report cards from first quarter. I had all As, except in two classes. In PE, I had a C-, not because I can’t run fast, but because Hannah and I pretended to forget our gym clothes so many times. And in English I had a B, even though I’ve gotten As on all of my essays. The reason for this is that I don’t talk in class, because I hate the way Mrs. Buster looks at me, so my participation grade was low. And also that I had a missing assignment—a letter to a dead person. It’s one little assignment, and I wish I had just made myself fake it, but I couldn’t. I mean, my letters are actual letters to the people I am writing to. Not to Mrs. Buster. But there is one way to make Dad happy, and also for Aunt Amy to feel sure that I am free of sin, and that’s to get all As. I tried to make sure that my grades were good so that no one would have any reason to worry or ask questions. I hope this is close enough.

Mrs. Buster called me over to her desk after class today and asked why I hadn’t done the letter assignment, even after she gave me two extensions. She said I should be an A student. And I tried to explain that I did do it, I just couldn’t show her. But she said the point of an assignment is to turn it in. I tried to explain that I thought that letters were actually very private.

She looked at me funny. Then she said, “Laurel, you are a very talented girl,” but she said it like it was not a good thing.

I shrugged.

Then she said, “I notice that you don’t speak up in class much.”

I haven’t really talked at all, actually, since the second week of class when I said something about Elizabeth Bishop. I just pass notes now with Natalie, or look out the window. I pay attention only when we are reading poems.

I shrugged again.

“Laurel, I just want to encourage you…” She paused, like she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to encourage me to do.

Then she said, “May was special, too, like you.”

I almost smiled at her. She said that I was like May.

But her big bug eyes started bugging out at me, like what she saw when she saw us was a tragedy. “I just don’t want you to waste your talent.” She paused again. “I don’t want you to go down the same road that May did.”

And then I was so angry that everything in my body clenched together. I didn’t know what “road” she thought May went down, or if she was trying to say that’s why she died. She wouldn’t know. No one did. She wasn’t there. No one was, no one but me. I was so angry that if my throat hadn’t been clenched too tight, I might have screamed at her. If she felt so bad about it and all, why didn’t she just give me an A? Grownups can be such fakes, I thought. They are always acting like they are trying to help you, and like they want to take care of you, but really they just want something from you. I wondered what exactly Mrs. Buster wanted. Finally I just nodded and forced myself to mumble something about I’m fine, just that one assignment was really hard.

The thing is, I can’t hate Mrs. Buster entirely, because she gives us things like your poems to read. Yesterday we read “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The poem is about an ancient urn with pictures on it. It sounds like it would be boring, but really it’s not. I like this part, where you are talking about two lovers, trapped in the instant just before they kiss:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!