color of how

Sophia,

I will find you among the rushes and watercress; I will dig for you in the clay; I will paint you on brand-new canvas. I will not let go of myself.
I know you don't love me anymore; isn't that the way we all go? There's distance and then there's an empty mailbox and then we stop loving. Then one day we stop breathing and realize that life without loving is like water without wetness. What is that good for? So, I will not stop loving you, no matter how much my eyes crack.
I don't know what I'm saying. And it seems like all I can do is crack. Cracked cracking firecracker crack my eyes open. The color of how to bleed.
If you burn this before reading it, I think I will love you more than ever. Something is not right with me. I feel like a cloud dissolving into the great vast solvent of sky.
Sophia, your name rests in my teeth like so many leaves and I smell you in woodsmoke and you are the space between galaxies. But all my pretty phrases can't make me pretty.
Sophia, if you don't answer this I promise I will die of fulfilled expectations.
I love you, Sophia.

Thomas Street

9.5" x 6"

Dear Sophia,

    I've been thinking about you a lot recently. Whenever I'm happy or quiet or tired, I imagine you walking through the door or down the sidewalk, and I see you, and things feel whole, like snowfall at night or lying in the grass. There's half an Earth between us, but I can't help but think that you're still just up the hill, watching the crystal green sunset.
    And yet you're more distant than ever. I can't remember what you sound like, how you walk, the way your eyes move. I can't dream about you. I dream about everyone else (the record store girl, the angry liar, the silent redhead, my brother's ex-girlfriend, my former best friend) but never you. You're beyond simple sleep-stories. I've tried loving everyone else, and only you are honest.
    The weather has been hopeless without you. One minute it is the heat of the sun and the dusty smell of the present, and then it's thunder and dirty gray and uncertainty. We had some snow, and I thought of you.
    I remember you once said that while you were gone, there would be days where no one thought about you. You underestimated yourself. I am making sure to think about you every day, so that when you return I can tell you that you were wrong.
    Oh, how wonderful it will be to see you again! I often smile about you, and when others ask me what is so worth smiling about, I reply that they couldn't understand. How could they? They have never met you, never seen the shades of orange you paint on everything around you, never been scattered by your smiling fingers.
    I'm sorry you haven't received a letter from me in so long. I forget to send them to you. I write too many letters to you. I write them with my feet, tapping on the wooden floors. I write them with my eyes on a blank wall, and with my voice in cryptic sentences of longing. I forget which letters I can send and which must remain locked in cages and notebooks.
    I think I am more you than I am myself.

Thomas "And-The-Other" Street

postcard, reverse

Dear Sophia,

   The tower you see in the picture is like a god. He stands over all of us, and we lead our little lives in his shadow. I hope I don't have to stay here long. I think about the tower falling and destroying those who keep its ground, and then I wake up shivering and crying.
   But you don't want to hear about my puerile tremors. I have much more to tell you. More important things to draw in inklines.
   I always expect to see you around every corner, in the coffeeshops and bookstores, like our younger days. Before I became an idealist. I know you're an ocean and a half away, but it's just water. We're made of oceans. Aren't we?
   I sound like I doubt myself. Sounds are true. I doubt myself so much these days, days no different from the rest of my life. I'm traveling, I'm crying, I'm writing, just as always. Even when I couldn't travel, I'd do so when no one was looking. I'd fly away on magic carpets woven in a neuron mesh and feel the wind of my throat whip past my ears.
   I don't know where I'm going, I don't even think I know why I'm going. It's very much like a vacation. You sleep in late just to feel like you can. I have to know that I can still move my joints, that I'm not just a tinman too tired.
   Lately I can only read about the murderers, the incurably criminal, and the depraved. I hope literature isn't a mirror. I hope it's more of a magnifying glass.
   Who says literature is made of light? Lighterature.
   I hope to dream of you soon.

Thomas "Ever-Since" Street