The Gosh-Darn and Gosh-Darnest

(Lost Memories and the Bible of My Grandmother, of Holy Mountain, 2010)

To Whom It May Concern,

Maybe it was the little pines and the windy wind that took a piece from me and took a piece from you. It's that lack of, the smell of, and the push-goes-to-shove. I am speaking completely naked right now, and I'm not cupping it either:

If anything says yes, if anything means more, if anything tells me more and more so, I'll tie myself to a rather large log and leave it by the river. Because nothing makes more sense than nonsense. On the second thought, let that river take me, I'll either drown or learn to breathe like a fish, and once I'm dead and once I'm amphibious I'll know the way the river flows. The way it takes me over, the way it throws me to the rocks, the way it gives me time to breathe, only to sink me into its rapids. And if I survive all of it, I hope you'll still be there, I hope that you'll still listen to my craze, my delusion, in my wet clothes; torn like my flesh and like my logic, of reminiscence of once was. If you are still there, I will tell you the most wonderful story I know. Yes, I'll build it, and yes it will be epic, for it is all I am. Until then, I keep telling myself, until then, I'll be here, by the river, ready to rock the unsteady. I'll drown, I'll hit that floor, I'll tell you it all, with a scream of whisper, of tales of the tallest and the shortest of lies, with hair on my chest, with blood in my eyes, with all the fire in my soul. All the fire in my soul, please.

If we make it there, can you just hold me.

Sincerely,

-J. Rivers.