Josepha Gutelius
	Valentine   I write long letters to the dead  (you only know how heartfully), in the woods, scratching the bark with my lonely fantasies, you were always near, the one to decipher my messages. True, I would guide you, you couldn't have found your way alone. I wouldn't have wanted you to. I loved holding the secret.   It's been thirteen years to the day since your last letter came, a forest fell out of the envelope, fire blew off the bush, you see I do remember and handwriting like someone opening his veins. The charms you enclosed ("spitted flames") looked like the rubies my mother piled on for shopping tennis anywhere anytime she didn't give a hoot for propriety. They kiss-kiss when I put them on.   But that's not what I wanted to say. I'm writing you because she died yesterday I think you should know that she kept on asking me When for godsake you going to marry that boy so handsome and  lucky. I didn't have it in me to remind her you were dead.   So darling, should you meet her, I'm afraid you have a little explaining to do. I meant no harm by my deception, tell her that please, and let me know what she says because I hate to think this is something you can’t read.   Before the Celebration   once there was a little world waiting to be mended.   dimming light and the hour’s hoax of perfect timing.   a life-sized dummy   rotating on a flat earth, struck by pins and the busy scissors of the seamstress, quick, what was her name?   a chart of the earth’s surface was the body’s, tailored to changing measurements, each year look ma, I’ve grown.   then there was a rip so final.   a rip. Maybe only a pinpoint split -- and darkness falling swiftly.   such dead stillness, and the dummy tilting elsewhere, waiting to be lit.