TO: Any Soldier

I don't know what happened to you
Where you went
What you're doing?
At one time, I knew you intimately,
as intimately as the pages
would allow.

Your letters kept me sane.
You told me that mine did the same for you.
Adolescent girl,
shy, afraid-
you were my first real boyfriend,
that wasn't really my boyfriend.

With each letter that I dropped in the mail
with no postage
my ink formed swirls of paper kisses-
I sent letters that could have spun up
their own 'Desert Storm".

I would wait in 6th hour for the bell to ring
foot tapping floor in anticipation.
Then, home to my mailbox.
Waiting for the postman-deliverer of my sustenance.
For months, feeding upon each word,
lingering with lusty lips
licked by titillated tongue.
Anxious fingers rip open your latest installment-
smoldering with smut, smelling like you.

Soon the war was over. (Did they even call it a "war"?)
I went off to college, to frat parties, parades, vigils, art fairs,
museums.
Where did you go? Did you ever think of me, "Wild Bill"?
Do you ever stop and wonder
What I'm doing, where I'm going, why we never met?
I think of you&;#8230;
When I look at the world map,
When I see sand,
When I see artillery,
When I see a man in uniform&;#8230;
When somebody talks about Guam.
Something tells me, though
that I'll never smell paper kisses
quite the same way.