Dear Vera

by Matthew McGovern

Dear Vera,

How long it took I do not know, but over the hills and through the woods my letter found its way.

I’ll write to you until we’ve chopped down all the trees and left none for paper. Until each and every last wellspring – of ink, oil and inclination – has dried. Until the USPS goes bankrupt and carrier pigeons have gone extinct. Until carpal tunnel wrenches my wrists and there are no more ways for my words to get through.

Having said that, I’ll neither email nor instant message – direct, indirect or otherwise – I’m categorically opposed. You see, despite my zeal, I’m afraid you will read me right off the bat, and leave me as such, merely ‘read’, crossed off a to-do list or, worse yet, lost in the ether. Web worldwide and images moving, I want to be more than a figment or pixel.

Digitized words are a distraction like a fruit fly or gnat, batted away, a bright screen piquing from which you turn. Instead, please stop for a moment, hold the envelope scuffed and traveled, before opening with a penknife or peel and tear in. I hope you can acquaint yourself with my odd lettering that weaves and bobs and abbreviates, thoughts which wind across the page and escape their given partitions.

I aim to be legible in the full sense of the word, but what’s the harm if you have to squint and decipher, hold up the letter to your eyes? I invite you close! May there be no gulf between these words and what reaches you.

Two stamps and a kiss, I send my words. Be in good health and high spirits, we’ll see each other again and I require no reply, foremost I want to be read true. Namely, by you.

Yours, Earnest art | Kyle Burton

i heard you on the phone the other night, whispering words i used to dream of, held close to my chest like the promise of spring, your voice cutting through the static slicing my nebulous mind into ribbons with the cold steel of certainty.

i want you.

imagination made load-bearing, substance inspires far more terror than the airy wisps of thought i spin into a tapestry of my own design. life’s patterns do not mirror my own mental loom, and i’ve discovered i don’t much like to relinquish my hold on arachne’s talents.

i am terrified that i might one day consent to have my heart scooped out, to be held all in one hand, to have art | Dana Flynn my blood read for filth. or, worse yet— that i might turn myself bare, and that you might find the calligraphy of my veins to be weaver’s nightmareutterly incomprehensible. by Megan Amero