Aerogramme Poem by Elizabeth Spires

A featherweight letter drops through the mailslot
addressed to me. Pale blue, it has followed me
from city to city, travelling oceans and continents,
to arrive thirty years late. The writing is illegible.

And then the doorbell rings and there you are,
boyish as ever, in your Beatle haircut and olive drab
turtleneck sweater, holding a dog-eared copy
of Being and Nothingness, sure I'll invite you in.

Late night I dreamed all this. Affectionate strangers,
we kissed, as we never had, and I was thirteen again.
Then I had to pull away or lose myself completely
in the Proustian shock of your aftershave.

I can still remember, if I try, what I felt then.
A girl in love for the first time is the purest creature!
So that now, old ghost, believing nothing is coincidence,
I must write to you on onionskin, closing the circle.

I hold in my hand sheets that the slightest breath
would scatter: words without weight, my unsent letter.