Fox Henry Frazier: Another Love Letter
Another Love Letter
Five deer and a fox on my hill as I walk in blue morning brume. I will never marry again.
My second husband bought me a blue lace agate ring for our fifth anniversary
because it was cheaper than the citrus perfume I wanted. He picked it up in a shop
next door to the bar where he was cheating on me. Squirrels scold from a tree.
Deer cross the path before me & I am surprised by a rush of love—
the doe guards her fawn the stag regards me, knowing
I broke his antlers to crown myself once, smeared
his blood over my face bit through his heart
It’s not your birthstone, it’s my fucking daughter’s, he slurred
when he gave me the ring. A raccoon knocks a bird
feeder to the ground, tears it open. Seeds pour out. Since I was a little girl,
I have known that I would have three husbands; as it happens,
two were more than enough. The second found so many ways to show me
that to him, I was a deer
he’d lured into his garage my daughter
falling snow for him to mould in his hands
or press his boots into
A bobcat runs through the meadow I catch my breath.
I will never marry again but I have
surprised myself by falling in love. I knew he was
coming for me: a teacher of children,
cartographer of stars. I learned one night that we’d crossed
state lines, as teenage strangers
residing hundreds of miles apart, to attend
the same protest at a military base. We didn’t
meet there
(though I could swear
I looked at him for a moment: he passed me, oblivious in the cold rain,
didn’t he? And didn’t I feel my body stir hot, then forget? & never quite forget?)
When he told me about encountering an ancestral spirit
in the woods, an orange sunset filled my space & I wanted him
to stay the great cat disappears
someday I will
walk through brume
forest walk right past the edges of this world & find feral, beautiful
energies darting yet about me I’ll taste the spray of bright waters
crashing mercifully against astral shore know I was never just
me at all &
I’m home— I’ll transmogrify
mineral fragment on the beach to part of the ocean itself maybe
someday born again as a pebble, washed ashore on some planet
we won’t have killed yet I write
love letters, now, some mornings as I walk in the ocean I photograph
sunrise wild birds share them with this man who knows
how to touch me the way I have been waiting
all my life to be touched the way I didn’t think anyone
would be able to No I will
never marry again
but I am
asking him to walk me home
Fox Henry Frazier is a poet and essayist whose books include Weeping in the Tropical Moonlit Night Because Nobody’s Told Her (Yes Poetry, 2022), Raven King (Yes Poetry, 2021), and The Hydromantic Histories (Bright Hill Press, 2015). Fox holds an MFA from Columbia University and a PhD from the University of Southern California, where she was also a Provost’s Fellow. She created and co-manages the indie press Agape Editions, the literary & arts magazine Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself, and the Favorite Poems reading series. She lives in upstate NY with her daughter, her dogs, her gardens, and her ghosts.
