I have taken all my Tibetan prayer flags
and sent them to Peru.
I can imagine the Andean condors,
leaving the colors of my dreams in torn strips
scattered across the white silence of a mountain.
If there is no one there to pick them up
I pray I shall be the chinchilla’s savior.

The thing is
I keep addressing my wishes to the wrong places
perhaps
I am using the wrong postman

so I go to the post office on a Monday
and tell the postman he should send my letters
without stamps or return addresses
but he insists my dreams are each worth 37 cents, plus inflation.

why are you a postman? I ask.
I say, I think if we all tell each other what we mean to tell each other
we’ll lose ourselves. if we lie
we’ll lose each other.
I think we should write letters to people we know we don’t know
instead of people we wish we knew.

he tells me the only person who gets anonymous letters
is God. I stand there imagining
the deluge of desperation on a single heavenly doorstep.

who does God send letters to? I say
and what about all those people who just believe in each other?
can I be their god?

the next day, I got a letter that said
today, there were icicles in my coffee
and tomorrow, there will be no more turnips
in my garden. I visited the postman the next day
and gave him the last apple on my tree.

I shouldn’t bite it, he said. maybe
this is the last eden.
you can’t pray to an apple, I said
this is Earth. a life left unpeeled
has lost all hope.