mary

beth

o'connor

Unmailed Letter

She was my best friend--

tenth grade, blue shirtwaists

in spring and fall, and the long season

of pleats and wool in between

We were fifteen, singing

"Baby, now that I've found you"

Without shame we held hands

in the car driving to night skiing in New Jersey,

her father at the wheel,

the tires' palpitations my own heart beating

It was backrubs all around

the ways we used to touch,

teenage girls down-the-shore

admiring each others' skin

with hands full of baby oil

cut with iodine--we were so dumb

and so impossibly in love

waiting up all night

to catch the sunrise, smoking,

talking those long meandering

conversations about the truth

of our feelings on almost everything

The words our tongues helped make

pushed out of our untried lips

like smoke in the air between us,

like skywriting

Until one night in your mother's kitchen

everyone long asleep and us not

a single thing left to say, smiling

at each other too tired to go to bed,

too full of energy we couldn't satisfy talking

or even singing "Baby, now that I've found you,"

though that scared us a little

after we stopped laughing when we sang it,

when our eyes met and locked

and something passed from me to you

without my permission. I shift

in my chair, feel its hard maple seat

as if I were in grammar school

under the gaze of Sister Mary Dominicus

Look I've even folded my hands!

Next I'm clowning because you

are coming over across the vast spaces,

across the desert of the kitchen and

you're not laughing. You have big eyes.

You push the table away and sit

on my lap with your arms around my neck

and look at me, and

we sit like that for a long time

I'm afraid to move, afraid of the meaning

I'm still telling myself we're friends

best friends, close friends

So that later still when we go up to

your bedroom with its twin beds

against either wall and you

look at me and pat the empty space

beside you, inviting me like a cat

or a child or a lover into your bed

I smile at you like I don't understand,

as if I don't see what we've been leading up to

I say goodnight sleepily and crawl in,

undisturbing the tuck of my own pink sheets,

I feel them tight as an envelope up to my chin

and you, across the vast corridor, turn out the light.

©1997, Mary Beth O'Connor.