You sit in sweltering Georgia heat,
mosquitos drinking from salted skin.
Another glass of sweet iced tea,
fingered with Jack Daniel’s sour mash whiskey,
sweats in your hand.

The moon dips below the lip of your rented
wrap-around porch and throws pale light
on your rocking chair.

Soon, when the warm liquor has curled
in bottom of your belly,
you’ll look for me.

Barefooted and tired, hair twisted
into a poor man’s chignon, I wait for your hello.
John Keats stumbles over your thick lips,
fuzzy tongue, and the 1,098 miles between us.

The Wheat Diaries, as you called your time here,
are over.
You’ll never come back to these pages,
yet you can’t seem to put me
back on the shelf.

— Prompt: write a letter to someone in poem form