______My Dear Michael; a man who cast down the devil so thoroughly; who darns his socks, which seem so holy, because his mother taught him; who owns such a nice apartment on 46th and Leavenworth; who spends each Sunday cleaning his blood and floors, remembering the words of a reverend; who hesitates to call in ear of reaching someone unexpected.

______My Dear Michael; a man who takes Jane dancing; who refuses a kiss, only for unknown circumstance; who tests his lovers with apathy; who wakes with his clock on tuesdays to drink coffee and whiskey, then take aspirin at noon; who smiles at pretty faces and for who that's enough; who walks with limp when he forgets.

______My Dear Michael; a man who has worn black thrice, three, tres; who has crows feet at such a young age; who was a disciple of rand and roark; who was lost once in forest, but maybe made it out, or set up fire and lived; who shakes with caffeine and a moment of peace; who is raked with an immediacy which is the only cause of introversion, such an inversion of his extroversion, a past version talked about with tension; who read Melville with an air of familiarity; who didn't read Voltaire at all, because satire was never an enjoyment, though he used it oft.

______My Dear Michael; a man who seemingly was so interested in everything that he was a scholar of nothing; who spent eight months of modesty once read of Socratic moderation; who remembers a wall's fall because he ate breakfast with a girl named Julia at a place named delice that morning, and remembers a September dawn because the dust of that city was not unlike the dust of his; who once was so loved that he left for the Midwest, a trip so much like the tornado in which he made paper airplanes with the Brilliant Spaniard.

______My Dear Michael; A man who watches fictitious love and then assumes it; who was awkward around such social extremities; who no longer sits with his bourbon and thinks of strategy; who dreams of that tent which contained them both in those dark brisk stars, listening to children, telling spoiled humour, wracked with doubt and worry as they plod off to pee; who has the youngest how to break a trouts neck without rock, he taught him; who keeps an unloaded pistol in his umbrella box in case trouble comes his way.

______My Dear Michael; why did you so forsake Joseph as he flew to aid your fiery temper?

______My Dear Michael; did you come from the old country?, the new country?, or this country?

______My Dear Michael; a man who keeps their pictures on the mantelpiece, but face the wall; who read kant, but was to afraid to be a tragic hero; who was a father and son, subjective and objective in turn; who spent a few months in Burma because he heard that truth was there; who once was able to be apart of everything, and once was everything; who picks up pen, but can't finish the letter.

______My Dear Michael; who were thos you loved? How, How were you destroyed?