Lee Colin Thomas

happy holidays

 Just this morning my insurance agency, the time and temperature clock 
 outside the bank, and the receipt at the gas pump all wished me 
 happy holidays. I paused under the fluorescent station lights, plucked 
 the receipt from the pump and held it whipping in the wind. That sharp 
 scent lingered on my glove as I read: Total = $10.39 
 Happy Holidays!
  
 Can a gas pump wish? Is everyone so concerned with my happiness? 
 It’s an unpopular opinion, one I don’t discuss at parties, 
 but such sentiments feel as considerable as quarters—things 
 we exchange with vending machines, things we leave behind 
 with the tip. 
  
 I’m sure your crowded mailbox would accept another red envelope
 and tuck it between catalogs and credit card bills.
 But I can’t do it; forgive me.  

Tuesday

 If you hear from me, let it be Tuesday. Some Tuesday when your energy
 is skipping like a record player, your gaze stuck on the latest still life 
 of dirty dishes. When you’re considering dinner options, whether tomato
 salsa counts as a vegetable, your parenting skills. When you need a telescope 
 to see your way through to Saturday. When you haven’t made love 
 in weeks but you’ve been to the dry cleaners three times since. 

belated

 Happy Birthday. I didn’t forget. I’m glad you were born, glad 
 for another year of you. If it’s the thought that counts, I thought of you
 over and over again. But those card aisles—who can bear them? I can’t
 send you such manufactured silliness, photographs of near-naked 
 beauties winking behind strategically held cake.
  
 At the office, I started typing you an e-mail, mostly apologizing 
 for the medium, but I got caught-up in an impromptu meeting 
 that lasted ‘til lunch. By the time I made it back, the screen had frozen 
 and I lost my words.  

Tuesday

 Maybe on Tuesday you’ll toss the mail on the dining room table without
 looking at it. You’ll go about the evening, lament stains on the carpet,
 sign permission slips. And later, when the youngest is finally
 settled in bed and you’ve turned off the television’s soundtrack of noise,
 you’ll pause in the yellow lamplight and hold yourself steady inside 
 the wood-framed doorways of that old house. If you look down at the table, 
 beneath the coupon books and another New Yorker you won’t read, 
 you’ll spy the clean line of an envelope. 

be mine

 I don’t know any adults who actually celebrate Valentine’s Day. Not
 willingly. Besides, it was never like that between us. 

cordially

 I thought, how nice it would be to mail you a formal invitation: Come!
 Spend the weekend at my cabin by the lake. The whole gang will be there 
 to try some new recipes and drink plenty of wine. But this isn’t the movies
 and I don’t have a cabin. This is just me as I idle through
 the real estate section of the Sunday paper.

Tuesday

 The paper feels thick in your fingers and is almost the color of honey 
 in sunlight. I bought the really nice stuff. And look: there’s your name,
 black and bold on the paper, your address, your place in space. 
  
 On the back, my initials form a little symbol over the envelope’s
 triangle smile. There I am in your dining room, on Tuesday, about to say 
 the things that melt too quickly on the tongue, when what we want 
 is to taste the ink—I love you, I miss you, I want it all 
 written down.