Letters to Iris
2 December 2024 14:50 - on the road home from Chester
Dear Iris,
At last, December! We are headed back to the City and have just passed Danbury, at the lip of Connecticut. All this driving makes me miss Manhattan, which is so simple and walkable. But I would be remiss to complain, being so comfortably sprawled about in indolence and on the sweet arms of rest, which so rarely do hold me and allow all this fuss of window-staring, and imagining.
They’ve decided to name a south-facing self-storage unit off the I-95 Hollow Tree Storage, and I thought to ask what you might make of this little tree without much crumb or pulp or meat, and whether you would take arms against the emptiness, and what you might fill the unforgiving minute with.
I hope to see you this evening, but my hopes are not high. “Louis and his father have ambitions to resurrect the forest”. We are listening to a podcast about woodworking.
Vanessa
Postcard to Maxine in August: correspondence with Elsa’s Grandmother
[Somewhere in Ohio
Sept 14, 2022]
Hi Vanessa
Thanks for the postcard. I wrote very few poems last summer (it feels like fall already in Ohio with leaves falling on my porch). I imagine it is hard to write for you during the school year. Please send me some of your poems/paragraphs. And tell me your favorite classes.
Maxine
[New York City
Sept 15, 2022]
Maxine,
I hope the colors in the picture on the postcard match The Long House well, that they remind you of the Summer while the Fall sneaks up on you, that they inspire you. Writing is only hard for me when I spend all day in bed. The days here are fast and active, so I write often. My classes this year are muses, and they make me feel intelligent—Elsa has a similar effect on me, so I have plenty of things to write about. Renaissance Literature, Education, Statistics, a class about living well (which means living with intention), Fashion class, and Psychology (which I am the TA for). Yes, I am prolific these days.
I will share two things with you—both unfinished:
(1) I would like more love. More new things. More days and certainly more nights. More milk in my coffee without being called a wimp for not liking the bitter. More rainy days in. More confidence to walk with an umbrella on those rainy days out. More days and certainly more nights. More time. More animals unafraid of my hands. More steps that don’t hurt my feet. More feet so I can walk faster to the mountain. More mountains in the city because I never have enough goals. More things that feel like enough. More people that smile back and say bless you. More music. More strings on my guitar and more fingers to hold them in place. More holding. More places.
(2) the rain falls and maybe to water the entire earth but we pull on our umbrellas and say not me. we avoid our own growth, and we stunt the natural things from touching us. we continue with fear towards what was made to love us, and rarely do we say i love you too…and mean it. but the sun keeps believing in us. keeps the faith. keeps coming. keeps giving. keeps loving. keeps. we keep failing. keep parts to ourselves and parts of ourselves to ourselves too. we are meant to be shared. or at least we were. but if the sun can, so can we keep believing. i think that is why i am more likely to love you in the summer.
Have you planted anything new? Do you keep plants in Ohio? Send me a poem I can read to my new green-growing thing—so she may grow a little greener.
Vanessa