Life of Letters

I walk and walk and slip into military cadence. Your left, your left, your left right left. But the chant becomes a distraction. I need to survey what’s ahead, hazards big and small, and I’m still irked about the dog shit caked in the treads of one shoe. I haven’t yet found a puddle where I might rinse some stink off.

“Mister Mailman!”

I’m already two houses farther along. A retiree is on his porch, waving the letters I’d just put in his box.

“Mister Mailman! I have a question.”

I wave back with my own handful of letters. The man waits. It’s presumed I’ll be the one walking to him, backtracking. Extraneous steps, lost time. Having recently revisited Charles Bukowski’s 1971 novel, Post Office, I wonder, What would Henry Chinaski do? He’d curse and spit. If he walked back, he’d cross the man’s lawn, working the dog shit into the grass as he went. The anti-hero Chinaski wasn’t afraid to make enemies or get...