Melissa Culbertson is a graduate of Lewis University, where she studied literature and creative writing. Her poetry has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Flyway, Windows, Pebble Lake Review, Barn Owl Review, Wicked Alice, [GROWLING SOFTLY] from Juliet Cook's Blood Pudding Press, and Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century. Melissa also co-edits the online literary journal blossombones with her good friend and fellow writer, Susan Slaviero. The Fire-Wife is her first chapbook (dancing girl press, 2008).
The Shoebox Letters
I.
Dear bramble. Dear braid. Dear beer-drowned bee.
II.
Dear oxblood. Dear saintweed. Dear ring-around-the-rosy.
If I pressed an ear to your stomach, would I hear the thorn he buried there last year? The scars he carved: yes, the dark spoon of your belly; forever, your headboard, dresser drawers, the words etched like concave braille. His inked initials bled through your panties as you ran in the rain, staining skirts with hard consonants, red vowels. Then it was long coats. Loose frocks. You kept a box with a rope and compass buried under the porch, said your daughter would need it someday. You said it's only addition between mother and smothered.
III.
Dear mincemeat. Dear mermaid. Dear kitty kitty kitty.
This time, to find you did not require gardenspades. Matchsticks. Divining rods. I hooked the ring in the neck of the sinkpipe with a strand of dental floss, a refrigerator magnet the shape of the state of Florida. A ring is an equation: to wed is a knot and you are hitched to the ceiling. Just married. Merry widow. Widow in the window with a swagger like a willow, her hair in a hangman's hood.