LETTERS TO THE FIFTH FLOOR
Dear A,
I anticipate the noises coming from your room at night as I would a knock at my door. Your beastly intellect haunts, creaks floorboards and keeps me in a fever—it’s erotic how you move me without ever speaking. No, there are utterances. The growl from a chair scooted across the floor. A heel landing hard against my ceiling rattling free a whirl of dust: the evidence of a body. Your presence is like a trusted shadow passing in the other room. And I feel, more than ever, the need to love you.
Dear A,
For hours now I’ve been waiting for a fall from your window—cigarette ash or crumpled up note. I would treasure even your almost-not-quite’s. All the while I’ve been imagining the strangest things. You telling me secrets. You referring to yourself as in love as if there were any other way to be. For even when we’re out we’re in. A phantom stands at my door singing sad songs. He points to the ceiling as if to say it is different for you. You do what you like.
Dear A,
Perhaps it is time to go out and tease a line or two from my sawdust experiences. Another fly on the wall. A flint of inspiration found in the wrinkled knuckles of a beggar. Hard earned revelations. Maybe a chortle from a woman standing on the corner of 10th and Columbia will loose for me what she looses out of men. What I wouldn’t give for a spill over.
I would run my fingers over the keys until I forgot pacing: startling pigeons into flight, beating the streets until they sang. From that moment on, I might be known to say to people at indecent parties as the mint swirls in my pale drink and smiles fade into curtained corners
Yes; I have understood.
Yes; it has come easily.
Dearest A,
I own you in ways you hadn’t anticipated. I read your book again and creased my favorites. Damaged, I slipped my fingers inside your philosophies. But what appetite does this feed? Your words compel me to break down your door. The world is going to end or you’re making love—it’s difficult to know for sure.
Bio:
Sharla R. Yates lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poems have been published or forthcoming in Albatross, Lynx Eye, The Boiler Journal, Hartskill Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Poetry City, USA, among others. Her poetry manuscript What I Would Say If We Were To Drown Tonight was a finalist for the 2015 Villa Paper Nautilus contest.