#loveletterseries

Letter For F Part Three.

Hey F,

How have you been? Hope the new year is beginning perfectly for you. I’ve been pretty occupied with side projects since the year began and I have to say I’m relishing each moment as they bring me new forms of happiness. But I still wished you were there to see it and experienced it with me. There were just too many of those moments where I pictured your smile as you looked at me. I hope…

(Can you hear me swallow both my promises and my dignity? Can you hear me clear my throat before I begin?)

Your silence is of no surprise to me, of course— with every letter I sent to you, I placed half my bets on the lack of a response and the other half on my naivete. But I cannot say that I am not in pain; every red-flag of premonition was only another snip to this circumstance. 

My anger, though, largely outweighs my agony. I am angry at myself for ever bowing to the will of my hunger for you. I should have let myself starve. I should have never written these letters. I should have let your absence sting me again and again until I grew immune to its venom. You are gone; you have been gone for long enough for me to have any real recollection of your touch. 

Any love I have for you now is a phantom pain, a cruel attempt of my mind to fill the void. 

I swish in and out of existence with every blink, but wherever I am, in this world or that, you are not with me. No longer do I believe that you are simply resting in my blind spot.

No. You are gone.

And here, I vow to stop curating sorrow to decorate the space that you once filled. This is the last of all letters; I am angry, too, that it came so late.

(I do not ask you to not forget me— I am sure you will do that of your own accord— but I wish for you to remember this: you kindled a fire in me then, and that I have burnt myself too many times in an attempt to hush the flame, and that it has dwindled behind your back, and that these words are smoke, hazy remnants of the past.)

— Take this last line as a noose. Do whatever you want with it.

What heinous spell did you weave us with? Imagine: strands of silk interlaced into fabric. I have not undone us yet.

There's a pleasant wind outside; I can hear it rustling through newborn branches. I cannot help but wonder what color your skin is, now that the seasons have changed.

I did not want to cross your path again, not this way. But I am one of a curious, fickle mind. And I have not outgrown your taste. And I ache for you, in many places, but most of all, I wish for you to be where the words sit, where the poems graze like cattle, where the world does not exist.

In the city of my mind, all senses thrive on remembrance. I have poisoned myself with a potion of everything and of nothing. I am volatile, and I am fragile, and I am awkwardly hanging from loose hinges.

Love me, today, even if only in a daze. (I have not ever been one for reality anyway.)

You really do not understand me, do you? Love is not a favor. I am not doing this out of obligation or courtesy. I am doing this because there's an ache in me that only responds to your name. I am doing this because despite our shuffle to this coerced beat, I feel a little at ease with your hands on me.

That. That is a lie. You are right-- I do not need to be touched. Even from afar, you make me dance on puppetstrings. But this. This is not lack of choice, this is not greed in disguise. I hand myself over to you. I do this, knowing that I could decide otherwise.

Why? Why, exactly, do I come back? You don't love me. I don't love you. You don't love me. I don't love you. That track, that chant is unchanging. 

I just haven't come to terms with it yet.

--Here, again, I wish that you did not exist. These knees that have trudged through so many roads without tiring bend without will for you. I am weak. You are right-- love is surrender. It is weakness. It is a fragile necklace of trust, an adornment but also a noose. You should have never let me wear this counterfeit accessory. You should have never given me a glimpse of fresh air if you had never intended for me to be able to breathe. 

I throw punches at myself with fistfuls of regret every time I listen to the wind coo outside my window and mistake it for your voice. I am bruising, can't you see? I am strong, but with you, I am so damn weak. I am purple flesh and resentment. I am remorse and impermanent damage. 

You, clever puppeteer, know nothing more than to take advantage of this. I have hungry lungs. You dangle relief before my eyes like bait, and I run.

Do you feel glad now, that it has come to this? 

(Him. I should have never left him. You were not worth any of it.)

I am not apologetic for my vulnerable legs. I am not apologetic for this lesser version of myself. You-- you are not worth any of that.

--Here, I begin pulling our past apart, strand by strand. 

I will be a separate story by the time you ask me back, I promise,

I must take this letter backwards. You ended your response with "Love," as if we both don't know that is a lie. It has been a lie from the two of us-- you, decorating cardboard with tinfoil and pretending that it is made of silver, and I, holding that tinfoil and confessing it to be gold. 

That metaphorical tinfoil-- ornamental, cheap-- was our lust. It fogged my eyes and made my sight blurry. I couldn't see anything because your touch was an obstacle. This skin. This waist, this neck, this mouth. They kept you here. They ask me to write to you. 

Do you remember that one time, when we were sitting on the steps of some old building, and I told you that I thought that I loved you? You replied: "Oh." and I kissed the round void of your lips. I never would have said it if it wasn't for that kiss. I'm sorry. You, and your monopoly with my present, they are out of vacuum too. Out of loneliness. Out of desperation and longing. Out of the voice of my body. I do not love you. You do not love me. I do not love you. You do not love me. That is all there is to our story; that is all there will be. 

I am electric blue to you. A bright spot on a background of dull. You need me to be, because without my colors, the rest are plain. 

(I wish I was white instead. A blinding white. A white that was so greedy that it devoured all of the other colors, slowly bleeding into them and morphing them until they were of a different shade. By this, I do not mean to say that I want to make your memories, your small estate of this universe, any brighter. I mean to say that I want them to no longer exist the way they do. I wish to consume you, to destroy you.

But it is only a quiet wish. It doesn't make too much noise; you don't seem to hear it.)

I do not ask for you to solve the enigma that I am-- I do not even ask you to try. I do not want a greeting card romance. I want a cave to crawl into when I cannot bear my own self. I want answers like light feathers, gently catching me when I trip. I want a wall to lean against when I get tired. I want all that you are not.

I write to you because I no longer believe that you will change. I write to you because somehow, I have gotten used to it. 

Your apathy. Your cynicism. Your distance. From behind this facade of indifference though, I know that you can listen. It is thin; it cannot block me out.

And for now, that is enough.

Sometimes, I wish that you did not exist. I throw myself at you with a body soft with questions, and all you do is whisper unwanted answers.

I do not want to share your delusions: I am afraid that I am one of them. You put me in different lights and I cannot recognize myself. Do you do that on purpose, or am I as unfamiliar to myself as I am to them?

(Them. There’s always this vague pronoun to capture my insecurities. I do not refrain from letting words carry their weight.)

Today, I feel your absence more than others. I am alone and my thoughts (being vagabond and not mine), keep going back to him. Him with the seasalt tongue, with the hands of fading youth. We grew up too fast, I suppose, and too far. My solitude bridges the gap between him and now; and somewhere on that bridge, I find your footsteps.

You imagine love. A highlight reel at the dead end, a soft melody in the wrong setting. That is why I wish you did not exist: you imagine and project your ripped-edge dreams onto me. That is not how I want to see.

Him: a history book. You: a blindfold. I: both curious and tired. 

—Take this last line as an apology for the rest.