Bovine Hands

I read that to a cow some of them are like ice cream and others are like Brussels sprouts. Early this morning I found an envelope with an unreadable postmark stuffed in the mailbox the mailman never uses, and inside the bent envelope was a letter that coldly laid out her plans to stay in Switzerland another month, saying that her friends had a warm and furnished chalet available, that she’d seen the mountains, that they were nothing like the damn river-hills in Ossining or anywhere else in America, that she loved the parties, that she could breathe better in the cleaner air, that she had sex numerous times with her and her friends’ stand-up comedian hash dealer, that they were together now and he was lying completely nude in the next room with his six-pack making shadows like a series of little hills at sunset, that stand-up comedy in Swiss is just so funny, the double-entendres being so much more entertaining, that I had no idea, that I just wouldn’t understand how funny and beautiful it all was. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t differentiate Swiss from Belgian or Mandarin. Maybe this one is ice cream. It looks like it might be ice cream, to a cow. I know it’s maybe a little unsightly, but perhaps if some care were put into it, if it were just groomed a little, the grass in the sidewalk cracks would be more amiable on the eyeball. I didn’t know how long the letter had been stuffed in there, but I could guess. I should just take out those copper mailboxes and turn them in to the scrap yard. My fingers are getting dirty through the little holes worn through the tips of my cotton gloves. I don’t stop. I kill, kill, kill. These things have an incredible will to live. Some of their roots go so deep that when I pull them the whole cake of dirt wedged between the concrete slabs comes up, a quarter inch wide but a foot deep. Copper’s been down. The whole thing about the boyfriend was a little harsh. I can tell from her letter that she imagines my desire for her to be, like, astronomical. The mail is usually just sprawled on the floor, as if the slot vomited it there and didn’t bother to mop it up. Most of it is junk. We keep the recycle bin near the door and dump all the Pennysavers and Visa offers in there as soon as we get them. We’ve gotten a few notices from the city’s recycling wing telling us that they’re going to discontinue our recycling service if we don’t tie up our paper recyclables. Sometimes I don’t even get letters I’m expecting. They probably end up way down low in the recycle bin under Victoria’s Secret catalogs, promotional flyers, coupon circulars, various slips addressed to “Resident”, and are improperly recycled. This one is definitely Brussels sprouts. I can smell it. But that smell may be a good smell to a cow. How do I know what a cow smells? The sidewalk curves beyond my sight and there is greenery in every crease. It’s very healthy. All those girls she went there with—I should have known. They’re like implacable little urban weeds in her mouth. And she chews. Boy does she chew.