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NauenThen

Dear Markos,

What are you reading?
I checked out Trollope’s How We Live Now
& am excited to start on it.
I seem to be a hypochondriac.
But maybe I do have cancer.
I eat like a pig and I lose weight and lose weight.
Who wouldn’t worry
with a best friend who’s

a paramedic
egging me on, thinking of ever-graver versions.
People do die, you know, it’s stupid not to remember that. They die
of small things blown up. I could too.
Maybe if I’d ever been sick I wouldn’t worry—
it’s maybe like the way I felt when I started boxing,
I didn’t know what it was like to hit someone.
I imagined they might die. Nothing happened
when I finally hit someone. Do you worry
less because of getting shot or more?
Did I tell you I am the “beneficiary” of my sister’s new baby? I said,
I’ll move to Mpls & raise her.
No! No! Varda shrieked. That’s the point! Raise her in NYC!
I’m still at my office, the cool alternative to our sweat lodge
in the Ezra Pound. I went for a medium bike ride in the noonday
humidity (mad dogs & English gals)
One pleasure I do have in this life
is to think about my friends & my friendships
& how pleased I am for all of them.
My brain is addled by the hot hot hot.
And I only recently quit expecting one last blizzard.

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