Love Letters to the Dead

“Yeah.”


“Are you being careful, Laurel?”

“Yep.”

Mom sighed a long sigh. “I mailed some presents. They should get there tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks.” Then I asked, “Have you been to the ocean?”

“Not yet,” Mom said. And then, “Merry Christmas, Laurel.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” I said, and I hung up the phone.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear River Phoenix,

Have you ever heard of luminarias? They are a tradition in New Mexico for Christmas Eve. You fill lunch-size paper bags with sand from the sandbox, or if you don’t have a sandbox, you get some from one of the sand banks that are in parking lots around town for the holidays. You set up the bags outside your house, put candles in, and pull the wicks up to a flame.

I think they are most beautiful at the cemetery, where people leave them on graves. I went there alone tonight to see the ocean of light, which makes the quiet so much quieter. Each bag in the night was made by someone’s hands. Left for someone that they loved.

I brought a luminaria for May and found a place to leave it under a tree. I wanted to do something to show that she’s still glowing. We cremated her body. That feels so strange to say. We haven’t scattered the ash. I don’t want to see it. Honestly, it still feels sometimes like I’ll wake up one day and there she’ll be. That night plays in the back of my head like a movie where everything is out of focus on the screen so you can’t see what’s happening. The road races by. The river rushes on. I try to turn down the volume and just focus on the ocean of light.

Above me, the stars twinkle like they want to be as bright as the candles, but distance dims them. I bet your brother and sisters miss you tonight. I guess I just wanted to write to say hi. Or Merry Christmas. Or maybe to see if you are up there, in the sky with the stars, and if from where you are, they look brighter than a flame or a bonfire or the dawn.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear E. E. Cummings,

Christmas night is practically the most silent time that could exist. Like the whole world is made up of memory. After Dad went to bed with the tree lights still on, Sky came and I crawled out my window. We opened the presents we got each other in the dark of my driveway.

The newspaper he wrapped my present with was fragile, so I opened it carefully, not wanting to tear. What I uncovered was a heart that he had carved out of driftwood. It had my name on the back. It was perfect. He had sanded the wood down so it was smooth, but the grains don’t go away. I told him it was my favorite present I’d ever gotten. He looked proud.

I’d gotten him a book of your poetry. I made a bookmark from pretty paper with geese on it and put it in to hold the poem “somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond.” We read it in English class, and I loved it. When Sky unwrapped the book, I read the poem out loud to him.

The line at the end that says, “Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands” makes perfect sense to me. It means they can go anywhere inside of you, because like the rain, like water, they find places that nothing solid could pass through. It explains the way that Sky gets into me, into places that I never even knew were there. How he touches a part of me no one has ever touched. We both have secret places in us.

“Thank you,” Sky said, like he meant it.

“I got you the book,” I explained, “because the poem reminds me of you. And also because of how you said that you might want to be a writer, that time after homecoming. I know that you’d write something really different from that, but it made me think of how sometimes when you feel so much, you have to find a way to let it out.”

Sky smiled. “I hope we’ll both find the words for it.”

I had taken off my gloves and was running my hands over the heart he made me. I looked at him, and then I said something I think all the time but always swallow back in. I said, “I love you.” I could see my breath hanging on to the air. Or maybe the air was hanging on to my breath, for warmth.

Sky looked back at me, quiet. He took my hand and we started walking. All of the Christmas lights glowed softer and softer down the street, a path of light fading in front of us. We were halfway down the block when he said, “I don’t think you would love me if you knew me.”

I stopped. “I do know you.”

“If you knew everything I’ve done.”

“What do you mean?”

He was silent.

“Tell me. See if I still love you.”

Then he said, “Well, to start with, I beat someone up. That’s why I got kicked out of my old school.”

“That’s okay.”

“I really hurt him. Really bad.”

“Why?”