I know you’re not real. I know you’re only an actor pretending to be a multi-insurance salesperson, but that doesn’t mean I won’t stop believing. It’s good to see you there. Kind of, what they call reassuring. You know what a messed-up time it is. The world is falling apart. It doesn’t look good for us according to the science. Let the other crazy bastards believe what they want; it doesn’t matter; we all know what’s coming. Sorry, got off track there. My parents are dead. Don’t have much. But I look forward to your commercials. I know, laugh, some crazy lady out there is writing fan letters for your commercials. I worry they will stop you. Eventually, we know they will. Commercial franchises only last as long until the next dip of their market charts. I worry I won’t see any of you, you and all your fellow saints, any longer. My friend Tasha said that if I wrote to you, it wouldn’t make any difference, that there isn’t anything to believe in anymore, that the organized religious stuff is just a cash grab, but there must be something to believe in, and the more I thought about it, the more I discarded things to believe in. What a horrifying list. Some of the things, I didn’t know I could, and would, discard. I shocked myself at the end of it, when I looked over what I had left, discouraging. But then one of your commercials came on the tv, you know, the one we’re you’re all at the opera and it’s a disaster. Lol, I love that one. You’re funny and smart and witty and can play multiple characters, and the ensemble is right out of a sitcom, in a good way!, even better than that lame one about the friends. Tasha says you’re just an actor and you won’t care and that you won’t even respond to this. She says always writing you and not getting anything back is like ghosting. That’s the problem. All our leaders are ghosts. She’s invited me to an event about the climate, and I’m down to my last stamp, but I ask you again, My Saint Who Does the Car Commercials, Save Us before we have to save ourselves.


Ron_Burch_photo

Ron Burch’s fiction has been published in numerous literary journals including South Dakota Review, Fiction International, Mississippi Review, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His new novel JDP was just released from BlazeVOX books. He lives in Los Angeles.