Sylvia,
many have by now written to you, and I am no better than they.
But, if I may, I wish to disrupt your rest one last time
to talk about Ted.
I too have a Ted.
A Ted with a chubby cherub face, and stars for eyes that are knit
like buttons and crocheted flowers.
Ted is clever. As clever as the devil, with ambitions of a grand musician
and honey-dripping talent.
In bed he softens to a warm mush like a cinnamon roll
and later I carry the sweet scent of his sweat inside me all day –
daffodils laid to dry in a notebook.
He's my masculine half, flawless and fulfilling.
My blood's scarlet strings interweave in his spirit and I, too, am willing
to be buried in a small woman's apron and drown for him
in a sea of pumpkin pies and cow thighs.
I whisk yellow oil with egg yolks to make of common everyday words
poetic mayonnaise,
and mix white sugar with egg whites to make of loneliness
love.
All for the sake of being with him naked, just us unendingly on the hot sands of the Sahara
as he feeds me the bread of his body and sounds. Such
is the picture of happiness.
In actuality he lies there, an Agama lizard in the sun
a dissonant space away from me
climbing up a crooked chromatic key
to distant lands.
Easily forgetting my existence.
Incapable of asking for my well-being when I'm sick or of washing a pair of underwear
never complimenting my beauty
only my poems,
and never, not ever, can you embrace him to your heart's content.
(You must think such great longing is a virtue)
but Sylvia, forgive me,
it makes no sense to stick your head in the fucking oven because of a man!
We are idiots.
We are both such terrible idiots.