“People always say they’ll write [letters], but they never do.”

—Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Today, M.,

I rode the S59 bus to Sayville,

that typically kinder

iteration of our one-traffic-light

hyphenated station-name hometown,

and though I wasn’t looking for him

I did the Catholic

gestures when I noticed the statue Jude,

patron of dashed-hope causes,

near what developers call, lamely, a wooded area

between the station

and the Sun-Vet Mall—

not wooded area but wilderness slivers

you called them the one time

you visited Sayville. You

and your mother weren’t speaking,

just like now, and she forgave

you nothing: not the screen door

you broke leaving once, not the glass bottle

she broke once, aiming for your head.

In the taxi on your visit to Sayville

we talked about legends we’d heard:

how the Sayville founders

came from Salem—

kindly witches, keen believers

in saints, and mostly people

we, blessedly, didn’t know.

My mother babysat her sister, the dying one,

the arguer, the doubter, the prankster.

In the winter

to the telemarketers

my mother’s sister would say in a sweet voice,

have a nice day,

don’t fall on the ice!

before putting the receiver down.

In the taxi during your only visit you and I

played the game

of pointing out where

we might work

had we stayed on Long Island.

It didn’t last long,

the game.

There was a school, a hotel—

check, check, goose.

Neither of us could quite

see ourselves

bussing the catering hall.

And the strangely desolate

playground—

did we ever entertain any

idea about our own progeny?

A bench, two swings, more

wilderness slivers…

When we walked

up by ourselves

on the highway past the water tower

and the “weekly trips to Florida” van,

someone began heckling you

from a car, citing your tattoos.

Write to me, tell me

what you heard them say…

I don’t think we forget so

much as edit, a redirect of

lines and roots, and then say

so “this is what I remember.”

You have proved them wrong

and didn’t die at thirty, even at forty.

My mother never got the last word

with the doubter prankster, but that’s another poem.

I think our fathers would’ve been friends;

whenever their women and children

tell stories, the fathers play the ghosts.

So. This and that. And—on the same visit, because

you hadn’t seen one in years,

and maybe already missing the city,

an anthill filled you

for five seconds with wonder,

and send me your street address,

please, in Rockaway Park.

Send me burrs from the dunes,

splinters or dust from whatever’s

left of the boardwalk.

Michael Tyrell is the author of the poetry collection The Wanted. His poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2015 and The Traveler’s Vade Mecum (Helen Klein Ross, editor; Ren Hen Press, 2016). He teaches writing in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.