1 minute read
A Love Letter to You and Your LA Girl
By:Rachel Lechwar
From a stranger, sitting a table away,
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I hope you find a home, in a town somewhere between the Mississippi River and East Coast but north of the Panhandle, somewhere with honey-suckle shaded leaves and moss-bundled turtleneck trees that watch as she slips her hand into your coat pocket.
It should be tucked in the suburbs of a place that sounds sturdy, New Kent, Williamsburg, Windsor, somewhere that has Southern charm but also Pride flags draped beside stained glass church windows. A city where she can live like she belongs in Beverly Hills, in her burnt orange fur coat that still bleeds LA, but spend her days as a sous-chef at a local start-up and her nights curled in bed beside you.
I hope you continue to teach but earn enough to buy your mom that condo in Coral Springs, your mom who has spent five years asking
“Are you sure she’s the one?” like you asked her about your father, who can’t leave her anymore but still separates their groceries down the middle of the cart.
“Find someone who wants to hold you close.”
I hope that when you call her superficial and she mimics the twang in your voice, you don’t mean it too much but that you are honest when you need to be, and I hope all your sorries don’t pile up like laundry in the corner of your room.
I hope you never have to have another panic attack in the backseat of a car, even if you have to blast Beyonce and smoke weed until your heart rate winds down. I wish you no more traffic jams, no more heartbreaks, no more conversations with your father where your name dissolves like sugar on his tongue, no more nights alone in your apartment where your finger roams the wrinkles in your sheets.
I hope that you draw near enough to see your love in every shade of light, apricot, amber, honey-dipped gold, that when you hold her, your hands trace the ridges of her shoulder blades and her fingers fold over yours like cross-hatched lines.
I hope she holds you, so close that her skin meets yours to whisper “Yes, yes, I will stay.”
