every day i write this letter
and every night it comes back : sender unknown.

i recall the oranges in california,
round as breasts, early light filtered
through the palms, their dappled shade.
i remember how much easier it was to write to you
from a place that didn't know you.

my letters have been bundled and recycled
and i know that you will never read them.  the words
vanish, the paintings fade away. the gold flecks
on mulberry paper turn to ash.

on my good days,
i don't write letters asking
why the whole world has left me. on my bad days,
think of this thousand-mile
space between us as the prison wall
where i scrape out messages of desperation.

how can i choose what man
will spin shadows through my dreams
while the sheets flow around his legs
as he lifts up on his elbow to look into my face,
my thighs slippery and his chin rough with stubble?

now the moon glimmers on the clouds like
a lantern shining on the coal black water,
aloof, unreadable, a gold opalescence
shimmering to the horizon, ambiguously shifting

as  i write you this recurring letter :
in my dreams of amethyst and jade, 
memory beats against me like the sea.

i'll invent a language for longing--
longing is a subject i am used to.