Love Letters to the Dead

I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump in front of the stupid yellow car. I felt like I could burst into flames.

Hannah said, “He’s an absolute asshole, Laurel. Do you want me to kill him? Because I will.” Kristen offered me a cigarette, which I usually don’t smoke, but now I did, if only to find a way to suck something in. I asked Kristen who she was, and Kristen said her name is Francesca, and she graduated last year, and she works at Safeway. While they tried to make me feel better by talking about how I’m so much prettier and cooler and nicer than her, I thought of her running people’s ice cream and chocolate milk and hamburger meat and Jim Beam through the checkout line, and then running out through the snow in her uniform, where Sky would be waiting in his truck to take her home. And I thought of your poem.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Write it. Write it. Write it, Laurel.

Yours.




Dear Jim Morrison,

I played “Light My Fire” last night and tried to wake myself up from the fog I’ve been in. I bounced around my room a bit, but it didn’t sound like it used to in the car with Sky, or at the Fallfest park, because I kept thinking about how they found you in a bathtub dead. Cause of death: unknown. It’s hard not to know.

In the picture of you, the famous one that’s on all those tee shirts and posters and stuff, your eyes are fierce. They burn into us, calling us forward and pushing us back at once. Your arms are out, making you into a cross. Your chest is bare, vulnerable, but strong like an animal’s. I read about how when the Doors were recording an album, you would only sometimes show up to the sessions, and when you did, a lot of the time you were drunk. There would be piles of chicken bones and apple juice containers and empty rose wine bottles everywhere. And sometimes you’d yell at people. It’s sad when everyone knows you, but no one knows you. I am guessing that you might have felt that way. They see what they want you to be. And if you wear leather pants, and have a beautiful body, and drink lots of expensive wine, and if your voice sounds like the edge you strike a match on, then these things are blocks that you have given them to build the person they want.

I thought May was what she wanted to be. I thought she was free and brave and the world was hers, but I’m not sure anymore. Jim, I want people to know me, but if anyone could look inside of me, if they saw that everything I feel is not what it’s supposed to be, I don’t know what would happen.

Right now I am in Algebra. I think Evan Friedman is sort of playing with himself again. Britt is staring down into a compact she has hidden in her lap, trying not to look at him. They are broken up for the second time.

It’s been five weeks and two days since Sky dumped me. I would like to say that I am getting over him, but obviously I am not. Sometimes after school I walk the long way to the parking lot around the track and I see him making out with Francesca near the bleachers, or getting into her car. I want to run and scream at him. I want to pound my fists against his chest as hard as I can, and I want him to put his arms around me and hold me so that I stop. I want him to kiss me again and make it clean. But now he’s behind the thickest glass wall, like no matter how hard I ran at it I couldn’t break it. I could only shatter myself.

Francesca is awful. She wants to beat me up. Yesterday, when I walked out of school through the alley, she was standing at the end of it with two other girls I’ve never seen before. When I saw her, I started moving fast with my head down, just wanting to get past, but they circled around me.

Francesca said, “I saw you watching Sky and me.”

My heart was about to spring out of my chest. I was trying hard to keep it in, because I didn’t want it to land on the asphalt at her feet, next to the golden ring someone had dropped in the crack. And I really didn’t want to cry.

“Let me tell you something, little girl,” she said. “He doesn’t want you anymore.”

It wasn’t fair of her. I knew he didn’t want me. She didn’t know how badly that hurt. I hated her. I could feel the tears burning in the back of my eyes, but I couldn’t let myself cry in front of her. I couldn’t.

So I said, “Don’t you think it’s a little lame that you still hang out at the high school?”

Her face turned red and she said, “I’ll kick your little ass. I’ll kick your ass so hard, no one will recognize your pretty little face.”

I had to think fast. My body felt swervy and my brain was connecting all of these dots that shouldn’t connect. But one thing I knew was she is bigger than me by far and definitely could beat me up.