Listen to a podcast of Megan Martin’s “Postcards From New Life.”
“Contrary to Popular Belief, She Knew He Had Not Forgotten…”
Oh Darling, you should see this place without you! It is a whole new world! In your absence I have been busying myself around the house: unknotting the miles of filthy sheet-ladders by which you ascended into my skyscraped bedroom, bleaching them repeatedly to disinfect them of memory-stench, hanging them on the wintry line where they wither and crack like geriatric skin.
Each morning I defrost, iron, reiron, and fold before confining them to the darkest, most solitary drawer where we housed our secret pleasures.
Winter here is a beast. Yesterday I turned thirty years old. I am sure your card is en route.
After Many Moons of Pretend Strength and Adventures, She Collapsed On The Lawn of Grief
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Contrary to Popular Belief, She Was “Making Do.”
Whenever midnight crashes too loud in the asylum (I shall forward you my new address), I encase myself in a satin nightgown, measure out three-hundred-thousand miles of kite-twine, and attend to my cemeteries. Usually bees are still howling in the distance; usually I have forgotten my earplugs.
Per the Good Doctor’s advice, I have built a kite of dead promises, and I skip softly with it, zigzagging through the graves, the dead exhaling through the grass, lifting my kite nightward.
Tonight my kite shall ingest the moon, become a moon-kite never before witnessed, and the reverse aging process shall begin.
I will be sixteen again with hair shining down to my ankles. At every moment something new will arrive from my periphery.
After Many Seasons at the Asylum, She Climbed Into the Arms of The Universe
This is the last you will hear of my adventures in this new world, dear. As I write I am climbing into the blossomy tree in the courtyard, against the Good Doctor’s instructions. The Good Doctor is calling: come down this instant but I am climbing higher, leaping branch to branch, breaking more teeth than I have. I dangle! I perch! I feed myself bloated on the plumpest leaves, blackest berries, most delicate petals, paperskin stained with fruitblood. I scrape back bark from limb, branch, twig, with barehanded grace. Sunbleached words dry and curl, flake underpen like snow as seasons change around me (did I mention it is the tallest tree known to woman?), but I shall continue until I’ve whittled myself back to earth. Once my nails have unbloodied and resurrected themselves, once these sentences have turned to soil, I will finally understand: I am here.
About the author:
Megan Martin lives and writes in Cincinnati, where she teaches at Xavier University and The University of Cincinnati. Her manuscript Sparrow and Other Eulogies was the runner-up for the 2008 Slope Editions Book Prize, and her work has appeared recently in Action, Yes!, Wunderkammer, Tarpaulin Sky, and elimae, among others.
