Dear Jolene,
       

You don't know me, or rather you know me
only as one of the women who jog
in the pool you manage, a pool with mostly old people
and children, in 87 degree water that keeps away
serious swimmers. But I have come to know you
albeit in a relentlessly odd way
because while I'm there with my head out of water
and my glasses on, I like to look around
and for four years I've heard and watched you—your
great haircut and dye job—the brown under the blonde
in your case and my opinion quite chic. The bob suits
your square jaw. You like to blow the whistle
on miscreants talking in lap lanes
or running on the deck. This embarrassed another water
jogger so much she stopped coming for months.
When you did it to me, it piqued
my interest. I too like to keep people in line.
When I see someone using a handicapped parking spot
and walking very well indeed, I say something!
This could get me into trouble, I know,
but I'm 63 with gray hair so maybe not.
This letter is a different kind of trouble.
"Trouble," from Latin, turbid,
cloudy, appropriate for a body of water in which
nearly every swimmer pees. But the whole
world is murky sometimes, most of all the people in it.
What do I know? How sweet you are giving a lesson
to a three-year-old and her mother—you clearly
like your job imparting the joy of floatation.
And you've kept fit, albeit
a weight gain of fifteen or so pounds,
distributed evenly. You cover up more quickly
now, so I expect you're self-conscious. I used to be,
before I channeled my 91-year-old aunt, minus
two breasts and wrinkled all the way to the bone.
Menopause requires a shift in eating
habits. I skip dinner a few times a week.
You take out from Jasmine on Thursday nights,
sprinting into your glass-walled office
with white and red plastic bags in your hands,
then closing the blinds. Paying attention is a kind of love,
Jolene, although I'm not attracted to you,
not after that first year when the internet told me
you moved to Utah for college, married Jared,
bought a three bedroom house and had two children,
a daughter who should be 21 now, although I can't find her,
worrisome. A son born two years later.
Twelve years ago you were quoted in a newspaper
about the difficulty of keeping children safe.
More recently, a sister-in-law died mysteriously
in a canyon, her remains found years later.
i wonder about Jared, installing floors all day
and then sitting in the high school gym bleachers,
cheering your son. You loved your grandpa's
silver dollar pancakes and still use the steamer
he gave you in Elmira, New York, but I wonder whether
you're happy, whether your life turned out
the way you dreamed, what you dreamed.
You're a registered Republican, Jolene,
not surprising in light of Jared's familial Mormonism,
although your familial Catholicism gave you, we could say,
more choice. I expect we're on opposite
sides of most issues, including whether water joggers
should be allowed to use lap lanes. I give to Planned Parenthood,
your donations are a mystery. I wonder why I care—
should I get a waterproof Ipod and listen to Serial?
Is my biographical impulse merely learning
facts and constructing a narrative from them?
A version of reading, like prognostication, intuiting the divine?
Whatever my purpose, I assure you it is not evil.
Freud might ascribe it to loneliness,
an only childhood. Jung might call you a shadow.
Or this could be my letter to the world that never wrote to me.
I've written letters to others who won't write
back—the Phaistos disk, Caitlyn Jenner, alcohol—
spilling secrets in poems—works of imagination,
mind you, not journalism—fearing all the while
that the worst thing in life might be
not being known at all.

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Copyright © 2019 Natasha Sajé All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission