David Graham
	Letters from the Dead Mostly it's all jabber and babble, chaff pouring off the yellowed pages, jaunty quips and pro forma feelings. So sorry not to write sooner, they say, and you can see they are unsorry as cats, these long-vanished voices gathered now in shoeboxes, bound by stiff rubber bands. They're so unaware of the grinding gears of time, you have to stop reading, rise on creaky knees from the closet, and look out the window for a minute at dusk collecting in the blue spruce. Well, it was a lot of fun, they report, just back from Bimini or Holland, leaving no record of any actual fun, already fretting about falling behind at work. They say saw this article and thought of you, though the clipping long since fell out and you don't recognize the handwriting. Someone, somewhere, sometime thought of you.  No news of impending death, or religious terror, or the finely milled sadness of life.  No, they are looking forward to the new job, first grandchild, upcoming move to Tampa, and at most they're uneasily ironic about the hurricanes that will sweep their coastlines and upend all the trees. We would die laughing if it were funny, if it were not our hands opening those dusty envelopes, our shelves we pile the letters on--to be re-read later, when we're better able to face it, when things will be a little less crazy around here, after we're back from Bimini or Holland, and able at last to relax. For no one ever writes goodbye, this is it, even near the palpable end.  They write more later, I'm tired now, and these are the words we must carve on their stones.