Postcard 12

I know you will not grow old with me. In the annals of your life, there will be no dedication to the girl from Wisconsin, now and forever. At best, I'll be a footnote- Crown Heights, Fall, 2013: tall, blonde, indelible. 

At twenty-seven, I am practically a walking corpse. My mother, always the affectionate, calls me "Christmas Cakey"- a term used in Japan for unmarried women over twenty-five. Sweet and moist on the 25th, dry and inedible by the 26th.  It's a brilliant analogy, unless your family eats twinkies on Christmas. For the record, my mother is not Japanese, nor does she eat cakes of any kind.  She is simply erudite and inordinately cruel. It's a joke of course, but you cannot deny that my age frightens you.

 I know you imagine settling down ten years from now, with someone ten years younger. She will be your wet rose. Her beauty, ineffable; her youth, undying. And I will be a memory. 

But she wont know you. She wont understand our New York. And, ultimately, it wont matter,because when you're in the Maldives and she's suntanning topless,you wont give a fuck about the man you were at twenty-five. The boy-king of Brooklyn. 

Arranging flowers in they foyer, her mind will wander. She'll wish she experimented more in college, or spent a year living abroad.  Does the wet rose envy the sea rose?

I know you will think about me, wandering on a strange shore. 

I am presently away. Writing your hagiography.

Wish you were here, 

B