Thomas R. Hill

He had horrible handwriting so he always wrote in lower case and would only revert to cursive when he’d send her long letters that were clearly upsetting him. Since he’d moved back home the letters had to arrive via airmail and took a lot longer to make it under her door. At first they were fighting for her, but over time they seemed to be more therapeutic for him. Beautifully written snapshots that always mentioned specific moments they’d had together or things she’d said. Often they’d be slightly off because he had such a horrible memory and she remembered every single word he’d ever said to her.  They’d moved to New York together, both winning the green card lottery at the same time and then working their way through customs papers and vaccinations to make sure the dog would be allowed into the United States. She’d cried as they put her in the crate that would go under the plane. Being a nervous flyer already didn’t help but being able to rest her head on his shoulder calmed her more than she ever thought. As the plane took off and pushed her back into the seat his shoulder held her head softly and she could feel his breath moving calmly in and out of his chest. She felt safe. She slept the entire flight as he read a book that he’d recommended to her but she never read.

I can't see anything but green lights anymore, It was the only thing that could have kept you next to me.

He threw a brick through a pane of glass and got mad when the shards tore his fingers to ribbons. The only hope left was that every fingerprint would be lost to petrified sand, so when he touched her cheek she would feel someone new. Someone that wasn’t him.

I was going to start a poem based on a dictionary meaning but when I went to get the Oxford dictionary from the bookshelf that my mother had given me instead of throwing out, the only dictionary I could find was a Tagalog dictionary; given to me by a nun leaving her archipelago for a frozen landlocked country defended only by volunteers, who on a wet day had to tread very lightly on sleet covered cobblestones. My father filled a new apartment with furniture he got to choose alone. Was it different from fitting out hotel rooms or did he see the woman that he'd just left in everything? Does he see my mother in memories that linger around corners or does this city hold no ghosts of that family, no longer his family, nor the second one he has just left now. I started drafting out a poem about one year passing since my grandmother died; the one I read at her funeral was a genre piece. It was easy to take in and made her children feel connected after thirty of us had spent a week together in a hospital room as she died. The new puppy I got breathed heavily last night so I Googled quickly if that was normal; which it turned out it was, but when I searched if it was normal for my puppies breathing to sound exactly the same as my Grandmothers three days before she died as I sat on her bed holding her hand reading to her, there weren’t any search results.