Dear Stutter [“Certain words are still warm with your touch”]
Certain words are still warm with your touch: stutter,
for instance. It always gives me trouble. Perhaps
it’s because saying it reminds me of you, as though
I’m calling for you. & then there’s my name.
It seems like bad luck to stutter on your own name,
but I don’t think it’s an accident. As a child,
I was always nervous when I had to introduce myself.
Other words, the way a pillow preserves the indentation
of a head, also hold your impression: Cleveland
(my hometown), Chadbourne (the street I grew up on),
Oberlin (my college). It’s as though they belong
more to you than me, which seems cruel because
they constitute my home. If we ever part, you’re getting
Ohio. Other words, though, you couldn’t care less about.
I would be happy to give you squeegee. I’ll trade you
Cleveland for festooned. Considering that I’m a writer,
giving up festooned is a real sacrifice. Plus, it’s great
around the holidays. I’ll even throw in hullaballoo.
& why do you like L-words so much? Lunch, lion,
limelight. You stretch them out like a kid with
silly putty. It’s as though L-words are my Achilles heel.
Once at a writing conference, when I was younger
& thinner, I walked off the stage to a round of applause,
& later that evening another writer told me
he would be jealous if it wasn’t for my stutter.
He reached for the first thing he could grasp to take me
down, but the part of the story that really stings
is that at the time I believed him. You are the ache
I can’t dislodge & won’t confess, not even to myself.
Achilles, though, chose a short, momentous life over
a long & peaceful one. Where would I be without you?
We spent so much time alone together, skipping
stones across the river or staring at the telephone.
I have a better sense now of what it means to crouch
behind trees, to walk between briars, or to break full
throttle into the water through a pane of ice.
Some nights I take the garbage to the curb,
& the moon is as thin as a water stain in the sky.
In the morning, as I drive to work, mist hangs
between the trees like cobwebs. In class, one student
blushes every time I call on her. When she speaks,
she looks down at the ground, as though it were
a destination. Don’t deny it. I know you see it too.
Source: Poetry (December 2025)