ONCE UPON A
an excerpt from a love letter
Hi cowgirl,
It’s me, your cowboy.
I made it back home and the thermometer confirms what I already knew.
I’m wondering why we waited so long? And even when we were within touching distance, you made me wait a little longer. A bad hair day you said. You had to start all over.
Just like you had to keep redoing your lips. Old Hollywood, darkly lined and slightly overdrawn. One look at your face and everyone knows you’re a doll. Too bad they don’t know you collect daggers on your wall.
Seven months. So what’s an extra forty minutes? I read all your letters the night before my flight. I remembered why it was easy to make you #1.
When I slid in the passenger, I took one look at you with your boot up, knee resting on the window, and said get out of the car. I’m driving.
I remember how shaky your hands were when you handed me the keys. How I had to ask you to speak up over my favorite reggaeton you were blasting. I love how you purr but I do need to hear your words baby.
I chauffeured us to all the places you had written to me about, written to me from.
The shaded plaza with the fountain the kids were playing in. The Yemeni cafe with the rug you love, where you recounted the reverie of Ramadan to me.
The bookstore in Bishop Arts where you pouted when you came out of the bathroom and I had already discovered the Spanish section you wanted to show me.
The dive bar with the cigarette vending machine and the Christmas lights still up, where you tracked billiard chalk on your college ruled paper. I couldn’t stand that we were playing cornhole as a team, meaning you were on one side and I was on the other, and you had that one guy who was showing you how to throw, and I kept finding your eyes, and finally, the people we were playing with were so drunk I made up a score so they could think the game was over.
Your mom called you and you huffed at her and told her you were out, playing games with your friends. When you hung up, you said the only lie was the last letter.
As we got closer to the lake, the sun long gone, we could now roll the windows down without baking. You started stroking my arm. Telling me how you were a late bloomer. You just graduated college, after a false start, only realizing at 20 you needed the extended release, even though you hated the cotton mouth.
I did a double take when I saw the street sign we blew by was called Lovers Lane. Sometime long ago, when the Pony Express was all over ESPN, some kid whipping his ’64 Mustang, with his top down, and his summer sweetheart to his right was feeling just like me.
We got out of the car and you asked me to pull down the branch of the magnolia tree so we could take in the scent of its flower, which I thought was funny since we’re almost the same height. But I love the way women play.
I wanted to take you down to the bench we sat at hours before, where you told me you hadn’t seen a firefly since you were a little girl. I thought to myself and realized I hadn’t seen one since I was a little boy. You said it was a prayer of yours to see one again this summer.
At that time, there were Mexican families behind us with their water guns and their laughter and their cake smeared faces, but now it was only frogs, crickets and the moon.
I wanted to take you down to the bench, but you said open the trunk.
Wow.
It was the painting I bought. Well, put a deposit on. And you were showing it to me, letting me hold it, letting me drink it in, but uh-uh, no pictures. You were telling me, like you captioned in the Polaroid you sent, that it was mine, all mine.
Then you made me put your new decal on. After all it was my fault you got rear ended, on the way to the post office to drop off my letter.
Do they only blossom like this in the Heartland? I know it isn’t your hometown—that’s 6000 miles away. But your head is full of old Haggard, you know all the backroads off 80, and I can still hear the rhythm of your steel studded boots. You’re the boss’s daughter too, so don’t pretend like you don’t know everyone at the restaurant isn’t in love with you. Yet you used to make fake Christmas lists in elementary school, and your Albanian’s no good in the mosque. So I do see why you wore real life chainmail at your last birthday party.
We made it to that bench. And that’s when you decided to show me what was in the tote I was lugging around for you, with the keffiyeh tied around it.
A tiny knife, adorable. A tiny sewing kit, of course. A tiny eyeglass repair kit, nice. Then that pack of blue Bicycle cards you decided to teach me then and there how to do a spring with.
The ducks flapping away, in the dark pool below us. We fumbled around in the grass for a Jack that fell. Then I felt your clammy hand. You giggled and said you were sorry. I let you feel mine so you wouldn’t be. And then.
A firefly.
Where?
In the reeds.
Where?
There.
Oh my god, I see it.
You looked down,
and up,
and I looked down,
and up,
and down
and before we knew it we were in your backseat and I understood what you really meant by late bloomer.
My hand on your neck I liked, but what I liked more was burrowing through all those curls to find the three gold hoops on your ear and letting you hear my breath getting shorter and shorter and shorter.
What I liked most was when you were nestled against me, thigh wrapped around my torso, scratching the mosquito bites on your ankle, and you whispered in the dark. You said I made you feel safe. So so safe.
You kept your ear against my chest for a long time and I thought about when you wrote me that it was your dream to fall in love in a way that made his heartbeat spell out your name. I don’t know if you thought it was sweat or if you knew what fell on your head was the one tear I couldn’t hold back.
I wanted to tell you that just the week before, I was sunglasses on, walking through the rain, the same moon but only half full, headed to meet a friend who was broken in two, hoping he’d have enough blood for the both of us. No matter how hard I tried that night, I couldn’t find my pulse. I prayed that I would wake up seven more times, that I would be here with you and my dream would come true.
As I finally slid into my own bed at dawn, your text came in. Normally I would be upset you broke our code of letters only. Instead I felt a flutter when I saw your message. You were upset that I only promised you a night. You sent me a video you took of yourself the day before, having just gotten ready for graduation. Seven seconds, but I couldn’t fall asleep for another hour. I know every frame by heart. The song looping in my headphones was talking about una diablita en Prada, and you were there with your tan slingbacks. Still I said, let’s stick to the plan and see where it goes, knowing I was going to cave in all along. I wanted to tell you all this.
Instead I didn’t pick up my pen once and we have almost no photos.
There were Half Price books, and CDs, and bubbles on Greenville Ave. Quick trips to Quik Trip and your hand always searching for mine. The scent of cucumber, your makeup on my shoulder, that light blue dress with the straps I could never figure out, your metal moon necklace that was way heavier than I thought. The grassy knoll where I couldn’t stop laughing when you put the bugles on and saluted. Showing me pictures of the paper cranes hanging from the ceiling in your room. You said you knew how they felt.
Then we were on the way to the airport. This time it was you who couldn’t look me in the eyes. You just wrote in my notebook, tracing the same word over and over and over. I gave you one last kiss and at my gate I looked at what you read. You wrote that you had so much to say you couldn’t actually write anything. And then you wrote a prayer, that we would meet again.
As I stared out the window, at the oil fields and football stadiums, I wondered if you were the wish or the talisman. You shone so bright it’s hard to tell. There is something you are, I once was. Once upon a.
Like I wrote you way back, I believe in fairy tales too. Would that be okay, if that’s what I do? Save all my goodness for you. Not that it makes our villainy any less true. Believe me I know darling, that redemption takes two.
There’s a constellation for now, but perhaps when the ink is dry, you are the Lone Star.
Sincerely,
Levi Lopez
WRITER’S NOTE:
This is the piece I performed at my first reading.
