Room Seventy-Seven

To you, holding the brass key,

The key tag is stamped 77, its brass edge polished by a great many hands. This letter comes from a motel in the American South, October 1990: one highway with no end in sight, and an empty plain flat all the way to the horizon. The envelope is navy cotton paper, hand-lettered in muted coral and cream in the manner of a roadside sign. Beside it run a sage-green highway line, a long horizon, and an ocher postcard corner.

October nights come early, and by now the whole road holds a single lit window. A poet fell ill on a journey and wrote one of his last haiku: "Fallen ill on a journey, my dreams go running over a withered moor." — Matsuo Bashō, haiku written during his last illness (1694)

Room Seventy-Seven is small: a bed, a lamp, a desk just big enough for a sheet of paper. Please stay. Write when you are ready and we will post it slowly; if it rains along the way, that is all right, because this letter was made for rain.

Good night from Seventy-Seven

Storm Post Office

October 1990 · The American South