“I Hope This Email Finds You (‘90s Music Version)”

I hope this email finds you out of office, visiting nirvana.

Finds you desperately pondering.

Finds you in your flowered hat, having struck up the band and watched the fireflies dance, silver moon sparkling.

Finds you having crawled beneath my veins, neither knowing nor caring what your heart is for.

Finds you just like the ocean under the moon.

Finds you turning on the Rolling Stones, having been granted an hour to kiss the hero of your choosing.

Finds you in seedy bars and down darkened woods with silent trees.

Finds you, your power, your pleasure, and your pain.

Finds you sitting at the diner on the corner as you finish up your coffee and it’s time to catch your train.

Finds you crying sometimes while you’re lying in bed.

Finds you in a phone booth, cradling the phone between your ear and your shoulder as you listen to a reading from Dr. Seuss, an icy Nescafe in one hand and a candy bar in the other.

Finds you some kind of verb, some kind of moving thing, some hand motioning to rise, to rise, to rise.

Finds you wanting that honey and letting me out.

Finds you making me over until I’m all I wanna be (a walking study in demonology).

Finds you waiting in the pouring sun.

Finds you like the embers, never fading, in the city by the lake.

Finds you not being a gentleman, so help me Jebus.

Finds you knowing that the cornstalks talk, each to each.

Finds you in your Field of Dreams, the parking lot, with spare time to tend rhymes like botany.

Finds you hanging round enjoying double cherry pie with a frosty glass of disco lemonade, and

Finds you behind the lunch counter with Our Lady of the Jabberwock, so serenely helping her serve the boysenberry punch.

P.S. I hope this email finds you dumping your boyfriend.

(an original poem by Erin O'Riordan, written between January 2nd and January 24th, 2025. Edited January 26th from suggestion by Tit Elingtin.)

If you'd like me to snail mail you a hand-written copy of this poem, go to ko-fi.com/kofisupporter86474 and donate $1 or more. Make sure to leave me the mailing address in the notes. 

More than 30 airmen from Joint Base Charleston - Air Base volunteered their time to read Dr. Seuss books to local children from Kindergarten through fifth grade at St. Andrews Elementary School in Charleston. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Airman 1st Class Tom Brading). Taken on March 2, 2012.