Pliny the Younger

Dear Mr. Younger-

In around 1000AD, during the Crusades,
a little girl got a package from her uncle
in the Orient.
There was
what he called
an orange
inside.

It was sweet, he told her. You peeled away the skin
and the inside split into wedges, he told her.
In that package was a rasin, a big rasin with
up-and-down creases like fjords and cwms.

That's my story, Mr. Younger. I know you were as little as me when you picked your fruit,
but the desert sun of time
and the postal service
has shriveled you up.
An old, two-thousand-year-old, man, came
in the mail, with a round painted globe under his crossed arms
where dead people usually hold throwaway wooden crosses.
His beard looked like a cumulonimbus cloud
on his ancient-mariner, this-voyage-took-forever face, I-don't-bother, face.

I am trying to get to the sweet juices
under the coulds;
i'm trying to get you.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Younger.

-Emily