Letter to my American friend

When we met in that junkpile that is a convenience store now, our two countries were already making noises of war. The president was evil, although now in my memory he seems less evil. You would say between him and Trump it's two masks on the same monster, and you would be right.

We sold used clothes, made a newspaper, recycled tires, protested, and argued with each other; that is, an anachronism trying to fight against what we thought was an anachronism. Your columns were called Letter to My American Friend because you were not yet an American.

You were floating far from the place where everything was invented, also your clocks, sky, films, enemies, that is your self, and you were about to land just when I was about to try out the air. Those who are floating and those who are landing always see things they want in the other's life. At that point you actually cared how flowers smelled and I didn't, that was one reason. You fought and I was afraid, that was another.

Almost nobody who is around now knows how it was then. I'm not sure what you do now. I think you take walks by the river, and see movies that are mostly no good, and write great poems in your head, and keep up with your medication, and that sad pretty women call your phone and you ignore their calls.

I think that both of our journeys have taken some courage, yours more than mine. Most of the fish in the river can't go to the party in the ocean; they can't live in the salt water. The few who can are half-known, unseen in the season when they swim deep, and we don't understand how they find the way, or what they encounter down there.