mmmmcdxli

Post Deniability

Yesterday, I went through
all of my unopened mail,
a couple of months’ worth.
With my back turned, I can

feel the hot, pinprick-sized
beams of your glare, which
so dazzlingly sting that I
imagine this must be what

it feels like to get a tattoo.
I’ve had none, nor pierces,
those rites of passage borne
from that adolescent-to-twenty-

something pain built into the
collective consciousness of
decades, if not centuries.
Go back long enough and

that’s all you’d get, I trust,
bullet-biting battles in the
achy trenches of both the
haves and the have-nots.

Anyway, there weren’t any
bills. Nothing like that. No
thing so overdue anyway
that because left undone

has me unravel here right
before your searing eyes.
I do all of that online now. It
is the 21st century, after all,

the first quarter or so built up
on lies, sure, but soft ones like
I tell the nice lady at the post
office three or four times a

year when I bring the mid-
sized tote filled with time-
stamped envelopes under
which I’ve personally

handwritten (yes, it’s
practically indecipherable,
you don’t have to remind):
“NOT AT THIS ADDRESS.”