The other day I emptied my pockets and gave what was in them
to a homeless man: some bobby pins, a little bit of loose change,
a few ticket stubs, and a handful of notes written to various strangers.
One of them I found taped to the hood of a car;
it said If you’re reading this, I’m probably long gone by now.
On another, which had been floating in a bottle
by the side of the beach, was scrawled
For Lorna, the only woman I ever loved. You were my reason
to get up every morning; now you’re gone and I’m left
with a thousand reasons to sleep.
This man accepted all these little trinkets, all these odds & ends
of my soul with open arms, and never said a word.
When I was in ninth grade I moved through more hospitals
than my own skin; my mother once joked
that I should have a permanent collection of hospital gowns
in my closet instead of dresses.
She never understood how much that hurt,
or how, even to this day, I long for one of those anonymous notes
to be for me, just for me, for once,
for ever. How terribly beautiful it would be, I think,
if I were at the library one day and found a book there
with a folded piece of paper tucked inside, something that said
Dear Stranger, You think you deserve all this pain,
but one day you’ll wake up to the sound of someone showering
in the other room, and they’ll kiss your mouth full of soap,
and everything
will be beautiful again.