Dear Me

This can’t be said with elegance: you were wrong about this place. No, that’s not right. I was wrong. I’ve lost track of our front range, where either of us end, but we’ve been on the plains for most of eighteen years, arguing like sisters sharing only two legs. You the dusty light inside, bent on wiping boredom out. Listen here. Ignore yourself. Isn’t this your life? Eat, eat! Even if you don’t, I’ll say you did. I taught you love of chickens, feathered ones. To sprinkle salt on the living dish. Despite yourself, despite the wealth of butter out of reach, you have eaten Brush’s roadside honey, shucked her yellow corn, planted Art’s red spuds. Better, you gave bees a home in garden sage, grew ears and eyes in your own plot and they were good. Take the prairie with you. She is not the pale flat-chested sister no one notices. You’ve looked into her eyes. Take her plain face into the bosom mountains. Draw her furrows with your toes. Drop new seed. This wide valley nothing but the mountains’ prairie dream. Your flat green heart.