Work in Progress

Last Sunday I found an old box of letters in my attic. 

When I opened it, dead butterflies and mothballs spilled out. 

There was a torn envelope at the bottom that contained a piece

of scratched parchment that you had sent many Octobers ago.

~

You had told me, "Life is just a series of stupid pick-up lines,

and, it must have hurt when you fell from Heaven." 

You said war was broken artillery crumbled over orphanages and child hospitals,

and bullets are just rosebuds that weren't given the chance to bloom,

but instead strewn across bones and strings of flesh. 

You reminded me to go out in the rain whenever I could,

so that I could experience true baptism all over again.

You answered my question about how your book was coming along.

You said it was still a work in progress,

just like everything else in our lives are. 

In that letter you said good bad days don't exist,

but bad good days do. 

Home was a good idea for us to conjure up,

but in practice it was an awful failure that

taught our neighbors what angry yelling felt like against your skin.

~

There were stains of blood at the bottom of that piece of parchment.

Your handwriting had slowly gotten messier,

just like every sentence,

both blurred by tears and a foggy mind.

Just the same as how I read it. 

Author's Note

I'm still editing this.