LETTER TO THE WOMAN WHO STOPPED WRITING ME BACK

I wanted you to be the first to know - Harper & Row has agreed to publish my collected letters to you.

The tentative title is Exorcist in the Gym of Futility.

Unfortunately I never mailed the best one, which certainly was one of a kind.

A mutual friend told me that when I quit drinking, I surrendered my identity in your eyes.

Now I m just like everybody else, and it s so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the way someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and emerged as a human being. When you think of me is my face electronically blurred?

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest satellite dish in the universe, your smile as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash, how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I ve been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence so far, without spilling a drop.

Jeffrey McDaniel: the forgiveness parade.