Open Letter No. 2

Dear Girl in My Office ;

I would say "you know who you are" , but it's obvious from the lack of change from my last letter that you are totally oblivious. I will admit some jealousy to your lack of self-awaredness, though it has changed my opinions little-to-none.

Things must be going better for you. The repertoire of your play list has changed in the last few days. No more rivers crying. You have revised your music to more upbeat desperate love songs. Did I hear some Pink in there today ? Own it girl - rock that new love feeling. Unfortunately I can't say it's done much for my feelings towards you. A throat punch may be a bit severe, I admit, so perhaps a light kick to the skull is more appropriate for our situation. Everyone needs a little sense knocked into them every once in a while. Consider it a gift.

The woman two rows down is still whistling - and still ahead of you on my hate list. Don't worry , you're inching your way up. Did you notice the nice little number she had on today ? Looked just like a cast member for Star Trek Enterprise. With a little change of wardrobe that could be you , darling. A little kitsch and your mindless droning could be conveyed as some sort of undergrad performance-art piece.

Maybe we should become friends. Then you could share your chocolate cake-for-breakfast with me in the morning and maybe I would hate my life a little less, but my thighs a little more. We could be besties and I could make you a mix tape , that way we could both enjoy the noise pollution you smoke out the office with 9 hours a day and it would be our secret joke. I would encourage you in whatever on-again , off-again relationship you're in. I would tell you that this love is real - that this man is the one.

Go to Bermuda. Get married. Have a million babies and be happy. Then maybe the hot Australian guy would come back in the office - and we would both have something to smile about.

Sincerely ,

Wits Ending

Ash Wednesday

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Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

Riding the train makes me feel like a joke poet who moved to a city to find inspiration , but somehow is always brought back to the midwestern town where I was born and bred and bedded.  These thoughts come to me most often on the train.  These thoughts and others. 

Today riding home I saw two different couples. Both of whom I would have ignored except their displaced similarities brought me back to small house in a wheat covered town steps away from where Burroughs died. The woman in each pair was picking at the man's face pulling out the toxins with her over-manicured fingers.  I don't ever want to love like that again.  I have been that woman , though my claws groomed short for faster and quieter key succession.  I was wide eyed and innocent and a year later leaning over a man lying face down on a bed I bought from a discarded furniture store , pulling all the ingrown hairs out of his upper thigh - months later he discarded me for another - changing his mind about me in my own discount store bed. 

My grandfather had an eyelash that had grown too long causing tears to drizzle down his face in the waiting room of my orthodontist office.  I pulled it out and thought about how he made the best pumpkin pie in the world and how he would slow dance with my Grandmother in the kitchen after dinner. I would do anything in the world for him.  I thought about the grey hair in your ears and how I would never touch them.  I want them to stay just as they are because they make me smile. 

I  saw a blind woman on the train during the morning rush hour transfer. A young stranger took her arm and led her down the platform.  It made me think of the time I told a boy he was ugly because his teeth were rotten and my father making me wish I were dead with his words.  I loved that boy too.  If he is out there , I want him to know that I am still sorry. 

I saw a man pull out a knife as I was riding the train after midnight and my stomach turned because it made me remember a man I used to love, and me sitting in an emergency room in Queens covered in blood after he was stabbed and just praying that everything would be alright as they wheeled a woman from the waiting room through the double doors, delicately pulling a sheet over her eyes. 

The train takes me places.  As far away as I have run the line seems to always carry me back home. 

An Open Letter

Dear girl in my office ( you know who you are ) ;

I want to punch you in the throat.  I don't know if you have been recently dumped or what on Earth could have happened  that possessed you play Evanescence " All of Me" on a loop from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm for the last two days at a volume loud enough to carry to my desk 4 cubes away.  I am about to blow my brains out. I know I am not the only one who has noticed.  I am also not the only one who has noticed that you do nothing all day but surf the Internet and eat cake at your desk.  I am pissed off about this for two reasons.  First , I know you make more money than I do.  Second , you replaced a totally hot Australian guy who, had he possessed the same lack of tact as you, would have probably played something other than "pop-goth-cry-me-a-river-bullshit" music and was at least easy on the eyes.  I know - who am I to judge your musical taste? This is not about that.  It is about the fact that you have now become a part of the problem.  You have become a limb on the dark monster that eats away at my very being 45 hours a week , 50 weeks a year ( thank God for two weeks vacation). My pen is running out of ink in the endless list of reasons why I hate my job.  Congratulations !  You just made the list ! Number 47.  Don't be too proud of yourself though.  The woman two cubes away who whistles incessantly made it on the list long before your time , honey.  Put on your headphones like the rest of the people who have enough time in the day to rock out at the office.  Turn down your radio for those of us who have reached noise pollution capacity from endless phones ringing and bosses demanding peanut butter bagels at the drop of a hat.  When you go to your colleagues desk to ask your millionth question of the day - don't sit on it and pretend it's yours and then giggle about how you just don't understand some spreadsheet.  Music off !  Brain on ! For the love of God - at least pick a new song, there are usually 10 on an album.

Sincerely, 

Wits End