Dear Sir or Madam
This letter is the one you shouldn't open.
Or if you have, please don't read further.
It is going to give you terrible news.
Oh sir, or madam, we are strangers
but forgive me, I feel as though I love you
typing this on the forty-seventh floor
alone except for the man who cleans the carpets.
Forgive me if I grow distracted,
and think of my own burdens...
a wife's ashes, a boy who rocks back and forth
all day, and babbles nonsense. His photograph
and hers are on my desk; he doesn't smile.
The doctors test and test, then send
him to another. Maybe you, sir, or madam,
have felt a kind of helplessness at how things go?
I'm trying to finish this, to tell you
what I'm paid to tell you,
what I have stayed here late to compose
in just the right fashion, even if it takes
all night--the janitor has gone,
turning off all the lights. There's only my lamp,
and the quiet . . . . My wife liked quiet. She liked
to hold me without either of us talking,
just breathing together. Sir,
breathe with me now. Madam, hold on to me.
There is news I must give you.
Let's not speak of it yet.
from what is this thing called love, Norton, 2004.
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