novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- in-flight letter dear e. i am on another airplane but it is loudly passing the path i took to get here; when i was last writing you, maybe i was in this exact spot in the air, unable to see ground because the clouds stretched themselves into a field of cotton underneath me. actually, the shade was drawn because they were showing a movie. the cotton is under me now, not then. i can see the exhaust ports on the wing outside my window-- it feels dangerous to be this close. last week i went to visit relatives in merton, wisconsin. i drove a golf cart around what used to be a farm, slept in a room that used to be a kitchen in a house that my great grandfather built. i saw my first fireflies, my first burn piles, inside my first empty silo, tinged green after wind blew the roof off and rain collected on its floor, creating a muddy faux-earth that shallow-rooted trees have sprouted in, reaching slowly towards the patch of circular sky. i held babies and ate eggs. i watched swallows fly in lazy circles inside a hundred year old black and white barn. i took a tour of the lake house my great uncle built, staring up at the collection of beer steins held onto the rafters by thin white wire. i distributed wide mouthed cans filled with pureed pumpkin to the religious homeless, swam next to minnows in a lake, rode in a 1968 powder blue convertible cadillac next to a hungarian uncle sam during the fourth of july parade while tanned children lined the streets, holding out empty grocery bags for our melted candies. i ate bratwurst and threw firecrackers into burnpiles. i befriended a rooster named charlie. i found out that my great grandfather was a sweet, softspoken man, and that for a short time, my mother left my father shortly after my brother was born. this flight won't take me home, though. i am going to iowa city for a weeklong writing workshop. it will be hot. my nails will be long and bitten because my clippers were confiscated at the airport. i will consult a damp map in my back pocket. there will be heat lightning shooting sideways against the sky, fireflies jutting in and out of lawns as big as parking lots, and old men in dairy queen with twinkling eyes telling me how proud they are of their daughters. the plane is landing. i love you. elka 10:28 pm - 07.06.03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||