An Open Letter To…

The Man at the Post Office Who Started Shouting “NEXT” Himself When the Woman in Front of Us Took a Moment to Chat With the Postman After She Finished Her Transaction

Dear Man at the Post Office Who Started Shouting “NEXT” Himself When the Woman in Front of Us Took a Moment to Chat With the Postman After She Finished Her Transaction,

When I looked back at you (after your outburst), you thought I might laugh, but you were wrong because I love human tenderness. The weird thing was that after I said there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, and you barked back she can be friendly on her own time, another postal worker came up to say hello to you and pulled you right out of the line.

You clearly knew her—she helped you at the table in the middle of the room where people write packing slips by hand, something I’ve never seen happen in my life. You repeated your wisdom about peoples’ own time, and got a laugh from her. But for you to know her and make her laugh—and be King of the Post Office (surely, if there were one)—that means you had to, sometime or many times before this, be friendly.

You look charming too—clean and rosy cheeked and tweed-ish—so I don’t think you’re so horrible. I know book, cover and all that, but you’ll never convince me that you can’t tell at least something from the cover. My sister turned 30 yesterday. She swears that she can tell whether a person is evil within five minutes of meeting him, and I don’t think she would have thought you evil. Though she wouldn’t have had the full five minutes because your friend came and whisked you away.

I’ve had a preposterously long week, so I understand wanting to get your mail mailed and get the hell out of the post office. They still have the Christmas decorations up in there, which I find charming, though it is getting a bit late, but—charm or no charm—it’s the post office. As you were getting whatever you needed to get done done off to my right, I was being scolded by the postman (so friendly mere seconds earlier?) for not taping up my package. Oh I’m sorry, do you have any tape? OF COURSE they have tape, it’s the gd post office, but still I had to beg. I didn’t want to be there either. Well, he taped it up, two meagre pieces going in what I would call the wrong direction, but whatever. I thanked him profusely on the way out.

I left you there, gabbing with your friend, though I can’t call you a hypocrite because you weren’t holding anyone else up (having been granted heretofore unheard-of postal favor). It’s cold out but not very, and I’m so tired that it feels good on my cheeks. It’s not clear out tonight, but the clouds are thin, and on my walk home I could see the sharp crescent moon through the haze. It’s the time of year when you can see Orion, so I’m always looking up. I don’t know what it is about Orion, but it makes me want to burst into tears. All of human history it feels like. It’s really the only constellation I care about.

I like the planets too, especially Venus. Venus usually comes in March, when the sky is still dusky on my walk home from work, when spring is coming. Orion is winter, but winter is of course spring. It was almost still light out when I left the office tonight, in fact, but only almost. I read a poem by William Bronk the other day, called “A Long Two Way” that goes like this:

There is a going down into the dark
but getting there, we turn around, come back.
The solstice comes before the winter comes. 
It isn’t winter. Only slowly spring. 

Do you read poetry? Is that why you’re in such a hurry? To get out and try to see Orion through the clouds, to go home and read poetry? I don’t really think so, I think you might be a bit of a grump. That doesn’t make you evil like I said, in fact it probably makes you all the more charming to the people you do bother to charm (like your post office lady). I think that’s just fine, really, but I do wish it were the poetry and the stars. I don’t like that you were impatient with the friendly woman in front of us who spared a moment for the postman, but you have friends here too. I don’t know what to make of it, other than that I love human tenderness so much that I feel I must try to make something.

Xx

---

---