Letter to Someone

Look up, look up, the sky is open.



Look down, look down, your footsteps leave no trace here.

Under cover of darkness, all manner of secrets find refuge. 

In distant places, new thoughts take root, and old stories find new chapters. Driving through the rain, threading your way between two huge tractor-trailers, the image forms of what would happen if you slipped a bit left or a bit right. Sudden death = release.


How did it happen? The voices would ask.



Back in the City, walking alone until suddenly you have a companion. Where did you come from? Is this a dream?

 Is anyone watching us? Does anyone know you're here? The rain closes around you protectively, keeping all the rest of the world at length. This is your place, just you two, making amends.





"This never happened," she breathes into your ear, stepping on her tiptoes to do so.

Once a writer poured his heart out, not onto paper but into cyberspace, a keystroke at a time. There is nothing remarkable about this; people post to blogs all the time, and much of the content is so intensely personal that it would freak us all out if we decided to listen.


How can it be that a man can be alone in his house, writing, when he suddenly senses a new presence? Someone new is listening; she may be close or she may be far away, but she is there, he knows it, just as you are now.



Suddenly it is as if this invisible presence has taken over his hands, his fingers, willing him to say things he otherwise might not have said, not like this, not here, not now.



It's a spooky sensation, as if he, the writer, no longer controls his story. Then again, maybe that isn't so strange; writers often don't know where their writing is going until it gets there.



Still, this time was special. His unseen visitor is encouraging the words to tumble out of him. "Tell me, I'm listening," she whispers on the eastern wind. "Do not fear, I will appear in the flesh," she whispers from the west.



He looks up; he looks down. There is nothing, not even a shadow.

 But the words begin.

"I'm sharing my secrets with only you. I know you are there, reading them, reading me. You see me as no one else has ever seen me."



He waits for her answer. It comes in the form of a whisper from the north: "I know, I know. Just keep telling me. I'm waiting."



Her eyes big as moons but dark as the night, hiding as much as they show. 

But nobody saw. So nobody knows.