Letters that you never meant to send

"You grew up way too fast
and now there's nothing to believe,
and reruns all become our history;
a tired song keeps playing on a tired radio,
and I won't tell no one your name.
I won't tell your name."
-- Goo Goo Dolls, Name

Does anyone else write letters they don't send, just to have them written?  I do, but then I also write poetry, which is pretty much an open letter to anyone and anything that's ever passed through my hands.  Doesn't say a lot more about me, then.

I also tend to play the 'what if' game with life; it's quite fun to try it with the smaller moments - I guess probably everyone goes over the big choices now and then, but sometimes it's those split-second choices that are the most interesting to follow through if you'd taken the other path.

Actually, right now most people are probably thinking, "why is he doing that?  Is that normal, should I do that?"  Figures.


FORTUNE'S FOOL

She called me from a bedsit in London,
begging for child support or some love,
whatever I could spare: five minutes, I said.

We talked for hours about the weather,
self-published poetry and paperbacks,
dime-a-dozen comics from rundown shops,
the latest Turner Prize: edgy, she said,
very edgy.

What do you remember most? she asked.  Sex,
I said, and doughnuts on the Brighton beach;
magicians on the streets of Slough, clowns,
the greasy frying smell of Reading Fair.

What do you remember? I asked.
     Memories, she said.

We read Wordsworth like a body in the morgue;
silent hours with Auden, Dostoevsky,
carrying suspended conversations
to our doubled single beds: deep, useless.

I call her from a bedsit in Paris:
five minutes, I say, anything you've got.
For you -- she smiles -- all the time in the world.

She hangs up.