Dear future self,

And then, as though this week wasn't heavy enough, I receive a box, sent from my mother in Florida, filled with years worth of rejection letters and packets of poems from various literary magazines. Moral of the story: dear present-self, please be more kind to your future-self and don't hoard so much paper. On a brighter note, I found a short poem I like very much from my MFA manuscript, called "So long to the storm," which comes at a very fragile time, when my mother prepares to sell the house I grew up in. It's a rare occasion when a poem becomes the fortune teller:

The drive after the wind
took my mother
was wildly green.

Each palm's tilt
exact like a cow,
but not family.

In the window's loss
an enormous highway
strung into beads.

The windshield is broke
and the houses are gone
and no one is singing.