Letters for You, Letters for Me

Valle said it was for Valle. Nixon said it was for Victory. I said it was a line that reached a point of inflection and turned back almost upon itself.

Last night it was a strip of light that ran down a ceiling in a passage under a building beside a gig house where five bands played.

Inside there was a lot of smoke, smoking, cigarettes. Cigarettes that were loaned and borrowed. Cigarettes filled the air with a presence that only becomes evident this morning on the clothing sitting in a ball in the corner.

Young people, mostly men, bearded, crowded the floor, greeting each other and catching up.

The music obliged everyone to lean forward and shout into the listener’s ear while looking downward. This brought to the floor more attention than it merited. It was covered with large sheets of some rigid material, could have been plastic, could have been wood, or maybe metal. It was riveted to the floor rather like the stretched material that covers a sofa.