Fragments of the Letter I Keep Tearing Up
by Eleanor Ball
“The City and the People” by Jasper Glenn
Dear Gwen,
I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday.
—
Dear Gwen,
Let me start again. You have to understand: It’s July in Iowa and bitterly cold. My space heater is frying every outlet in the apartment. There’s this cloudy chill in my chest I think I was born with. Jesus hammers an icepick into my skull; I pray and his mom shrugs, “Boys will be boys.” My Aleve is the color of the sleet on the road. My Aleve is eating into my body. My body is eating into me. Jesus jackhammers away.
—
Dear Gwen,
I was driving to the neurologist yesterday, and there were no incidents with oncoming traffic. I saw a robin balanced on a tree branch leaning out over the road, and I wished you were there to see it too. You could have skipped the neurology appointment, though—I mean, I could have skipped it. It was just one of those med check appointments where everyone agrees my medication isn’t working, and Dr. Brown keeps prescribing it anyway. It was one of those appointments where they ask me if I’m in pain that day, I say “no,” and then Jesus drops a four-foot-long icicle on my head on the way out.
—
Dear Gwen,
How’s it going at the costume shop? I took a couple extra shifts at Frank’s this week to cover for Bryn, since she’s feeling a little under the weather. My arm is dead from cutting out tortelloni all morning, but it felt good to get out of the house for a while longer. Even though it’s service work, I have people to talk to. My body moves. At home, I just watch YouTube videos I don’t even want to watch until my eyes bleed.
On the way home, I drove oncoming traffic.
On the way home, I drove
On the way home, I drove through traffic. There was a robin trapped inside the car, beating its head against the windshield, blood and feathers splattering across the glass.
—
Dear Gwen,
I woke up this morning to a string of twelve emails pinging my inbox. They were all from my mom, links to pop science articles about the correlation between migraines and protein, migraines and Atkins, migraines and weight lifting, migraines and . . . you get the gist. She and I got into an argument last night because she thinks I wouldn’t ever be in pain again if I go back to eating meat, and I think my salvation is not going to come from carnival hot dogs. Now she’s lobbying for an elimination diet. I guess I’m pretty bad at being a sick girl because I would rather have migraines than give up cinnamon rolls. Gwen, I love her, but do you ever just want to be left alone in your own skin, even if you’re rotting there?
—
Dear Gwen,
Today, the air smells like chlorine and tin from the wildfire smoke. I finally have an excuse to stay inside. Gwen, you’ve been to therapy: What is it called when you’re not depressed, but you feel . . . depressed?
—
Dear Gwen,
I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday.
—
Dear Gwen,
I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday. I was trying to avoid hitting a robin.
I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday, and I was trying to avoid hitting a robin.
I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday, but I was trying to avoid hitting a robin.
Because I was trying to avoid hitting a robin, I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday.
I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday because I was trying to avoid hitting a robin.
—
Dear Gwen,
You have to understand: It’s February in Iowa and I can’t keep cool. It’s sweat stains, ice packs, lukewarm lemonade on windless days. The air even shimmers indoors. Jesus is lighting firecrackers inside my skull. As the fuse sizzles, I pray, “Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he does.” His dad shrugs: “I think he’s aware.” Gwen, I swerved into oncoming traffic yesterday. That is the end of the sentence. The next sentence is: I saw the people in the oncoming cars, and I swerved back out. My back-right tire crushed a robin.
Gwen, I feel like a man’s idea of a hysterical woman. I feel like a stopped clock rewound to the wrong time. There’s this girl; I feel like I know her from somewhere. She drove home from her neurology appointment with one hand pressed to her eye and the other cradling the empty space where there could have been a bird. She spent the rest of the day with the lights off, the blinds down, her head nested in ice. It was one of those humid summer nights where everyone agrees God’s off the clock, but she kept praying anyway. She was mapping these lines on the insides of her eyelids. She was dreaming up futures for that robin in the road. She was waiting for the lip of the tide to recede, revealing someone who is someone who is her who is me.
Write back soon.
Eleanor
Jasper Glen is a poet and artist from Vancouver. He holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD. Poems appear in A Gathering of the Tribes, Posit, Rogue Agent, Amsterdam Quarterly, BlazeVOX, and elsewhere. Collages appear or are forthcoming in BarBar, Liminal Spaces, and Streetlit.
Eleanor Ball is a queer writer from Des Moines, Iowa. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions and featured by Broken Antler, Vagabond City Lit, Write or Die, and other publications. She can be found on Twitter @aneleanorball