Notecard Collection: Four

“Ruthie, this must be a first draft that you’ve sent me, and I have to say it just won’t do. It doesn’t communicate any real feeling or emotion. It’s just too bland and straightforward. Some subtlety and imagery will really spruce it up. Like the line where you write, “Dear Family and Friends”—what do you expect to accomplish with something so formal and conventional? It sounds like you’re about to announce that you’ve replaced purple with blue as your favorite color. (True, were you to announce just that, indeed, Dear Family and Friends might be appropriate. But what if you had simply given purple up and made no formal replacement? Just think about that! Or if you chose a favorite color category, like muted earthy spring shades, instead of just a favorite color? I’ll leave the salutation for that scenario open to the gallery.) Given the circumstances that you try to communicate, don’t you think something more personal is appropriate? This salutation is store-bought and gift-wrapped like three-quarters of the salutations out there this time of year. You need something homemade. Try “Dear Gods and Godesses” or “To the Poets and the Readers in the house” or “To the roof beams, all your eyes!” Think how your parents will read the content of the letter that salutes them in this way—“Dear Bloodgivers and Bloodsuckers!” Think of the haste and twist with which their eyes will reflect the letter’s succeeding words. But not these words, Ruthie, here in the first sentence: “I’ve fought and tried, but all I know is guilt and hate, and caution.” I know what you’re saying, I mean I do, because we’ve talked about it before, and I think I’ve been where you are now, at least as far as I dared go in my imagination, and some poetry. But they won’t know. How can they, when the sentence says just what it means without reflecting any of your fading skin color or the droop and surrender of your cheeks? And it doesn’t show where the blood will introduce a new red into the rug nor does it express anything about the tilt of your body on the bathroom linoleum or the purple and blue bulge just above your left eye where your head hit the corner of the sink when you finally collapsed. Try saying things in color, Ruthie, for the sake of the English language and all those who have to read your note before they find your body. Here’s an example that you may have as your own if you want it. “Just before I wrote this note, I opened a can of tuna fish, but not to eat. I just looked at it for two minutes or so before I spooned it into the disposal and threw the can away. The smell is all I wanted, Mom, and the lid, Dad, and, Rob, its sharp edges. I would have taken the garbage out first, Mom, because I did notice it was full, Dad, but, Rob, it was just too heavy. I still went outside, though, as if I had the sack of garbage in my hands, so I had to back the screen door open. No matter what I do that door always scrapes the top of the door jam all the way to ninety degrees. I don’t know how you’ve managed that sound all these years, Mom, or why, Dad, you haven’t yet fixed it, or, Rob, what you did with the five dollars I gave you for your birthday.”