misterpoop

Dear friends and family of Amanda Palmer,

I am so sorry.

I received the news this morning. It was as if someone had ripped
the bones of my legs clean from the flesh. Had I the strength I would
have followed her right then.

This letter is as much for me, as it is for you, that you might know
something about Amanda that perhaps you did not know. She was
married.

I first met Amanda a very long time ago when I lived in Boston. It
was love at first sight. It was fall. The Maples were turning red
and orange while I was turning away from myself, turning foreign. At
the time I used to dress like John Bender from The Breakfast Club.
Pathetic, I know but one does what one can to find some meaning in
this fucked up world. I was a piece of flotsam, a stray dog. Then I
met Amanda.

It was very simple. It started with a dollar, followed by a
flower... And then a kiss.

We were married in Harvard Square the following week. A short
private ceremony. I don't think she told anyone. My friends (all two
of them) made fun of me because she was eight feet tall. But I didn't
care because Amanda was beautiful, magical and kind.

For the first year, it was the perfect marriage: It ws ours, all
sweetness, smiles, long walks and ice-cream cones from Herrell's, or
sometimes coffee and cigarettes, the #3 blonde shag from Leavitt &
Pierce. We didn't talk much. In fact we didn't talk at all. Not in
the conventional way, anyway. We spoke in glances. Gestures made and
unmade. Ours was an unspoken love.

She was involved in humanitarian work at the time and gave beauty
(home) to the dispossessed while I collected birdseed and iron (hope)
and the original waters used at the threshold. Eventually we started
seeing less and less of each other.

Then one day I woke up and she was gone. I searched the entire city;
The Back Bay, South End, Jamaica Plain, Davis Square, but she was no
where. She was gone. Harvard Square became desolate. Soon
Abercrombie and Fitch took over the entire block.

For years I tried to figure out what went wrong. Did I make the
wrong gesture? Did I hurt my love? It was around this time that,
heart broken and lonely, I started wearing lipstick and painting my
fingernails baby blue. I moved to New York. She wasn't there either.

Time moved on and then one day I got an anonymous letter saying that
she had moved to Dresden. I went there to see her and found out that
she had grown ever more beautiful. My girl bride was a women.

She looked at me and continued on as if she didn't even know me. Was
she pretending or had she forgotten our love. How could she forsake
us. There was a man there making rhythmic sounds on the ribs of a
dying bull. Amanda was wailing. She threw chucks of ivory and coal
into the air. She gave me a look, as if to say run! Run you fool,
run! Was she trying to save me? There were tears in her eyes. She
had a new lover. His name was Jack.

Who was jack? I wanted to kill Jack. Instead I went for my own
life. The knife could do for some, but not for me. I would poison
myself. I swallowed twenty dollars in nickels.

I was unlucky in death too. How was I to know that nickels were no
longer made of nickel. The nurse asked me why my pockets were filled
with bird seed.

"Food for my love," I said. "When they come to get you, the wings
need sustenance."

She shook her head as if I were crazy.

"You have lipstick on your cheek." She said and walked out. On my
bed stand there was a red carnation and a note. It was from her. She
was here. It was addressed to, "My favorite coin operated boy." She
wrote something about about, strange new fruit, new beginnings. There
was a gardener coming. I was relieved and started to cry. She had
left for reasons beyond her control. Dark forces had killed the bride
inside.

Getting lost was never our plan.

She said, "I loved you too much to know you," and I understood. We
were meeting points. Paths that cross. A soft kiss in the hallway.
A phone number scratched on a reststop vending machine. She was
indeed trying to save me.

I tell you this so that you might know how much we loved each other,
how ever transient it was, and how she came to me in my darkest hours.
She was for me the only one. I have no regrets. My condolences to
you. I am heart broken too.

Could you please tell me the nature of her demise? In time, in time...

Sincerely Yours,
M.