Dear Kelly,

Apropos of nothing, I wear the season like an animal’s disguise, plan to wing it till the end of the year. There are many cords running across the length of the couch, ideas coast in on ones and zeros, without color. Or magnanimousness, unlike the presidential debate, where future heads of state don’t relate. You and I, one hundred years ago, could have been pissing in a bucket for the right to vote.

Dear Kelly,

Miraculous, the shade on her fingers, the music streaming from the cord. A sensation of light on the thighs leads me to think they couldn’t ever cram you to DVD, your voice would tunnel out like Emma Thompson in Angels in America, flapping your great black feathers and ripping the roof off this whole experiment.

Dear Kelly,

Cruising on board the 14 Mission, watching a child apply her fingers to every available surface, I want to be back at the field, in the experience I thought gave me the experience of enjoyment, before the words began to spill out of her dress. Back when I studied Democracy in America I obsessed on the individual, chose to see only her place in things. I don’t want simply to throw around words like ‘liminality’ but to be a sort of can-do political thinker, one who sees the path you take to the stage.

Dear Kelly,

Inauguration Day and it’s like, I want to cash in the next season now, please. Race past it. Like your sophomore album, late and yet too soon. And in a distancing gesture she creates space around the memory. I am in Pac Heights, in a black chair at Tully’s. You’ll still recognize me through the darkening window by the glittering at my breast. Listen, everyone wants music that transports them, Give me this moment, like an arpeggio, I admit! I love Gershwin! The world, stinking blonde in its ordinariness, will take your face and make it simply your own.

Dear Kelly,

At the piano recital, I heard the Yamaha sing out its cheap thick notes, the cheap trick of wide keys to make the piano seem more grand. I want to think you’re grander than that, not coated in black gloss so shiny I can see my pores. A flat tone, too, not muted but — gagged. No. No like that. I couldn’t think where I was supposed to put my hands to make it better.