Unsent letter #2

Dear You,

I will confess to having been obsessed lately, thinking day and night amd all points inbetween of what physical object I can possibly send you to accompany these failed missives of apathy and torment, written with such diligence and care before they are torn up and thrown dismissively into the flames.

This morning, as I lay under my duvet, it came to me in a blinding flash of inspiration. I am going to send you the first sight that meets my gaze upon waking.

Enclosed: one pair of eyelids.

Please observe the back of them, for this is what I see before I force myself to open my eyes and face yet another day. Note the flickering swirls of colour, the fluctuating nerves of delicate skin, the sticky residue of sleep crystals gathered at the edges.

Since I can no longer close my eyes, you should fully expect your next letter to be tightly wrapped around a package containing the ghostly dance of car headlights that float across my bedroom ceiling at night. I know you treasure each and every gift I send, but please be sure to always take extra special care of them as if they were own - though I am well aware that you are now living in the desert and have not seen a car headlight or even a human being for some fifteen years.

Hope you are well, that the weather is clement, that the sands are shifting, that the solitude is proving invigorating rather than maddening, and that there are no further signs of plagues of locusts. I don’t wish you were here. Not especially, anyway.

Yours forever,
An Unreliable Witness

Comments: 5

    In my youth, my sister and I collaborated on a very deep and meaningful song I wrote entitled “All Messed Up” which opened with the lyric

    “Looking at the colours on the insides of my eyelids;
    It’s very dark.”

    I’ve always considered those two of the very best lines I ever wrote. My sister brought up the tempo and added a middle eight on harpischord. I still have a terrifying wav file somewhere.

    Did anyone ever tell you that you have really cute eyelids?

    The Goldfish | 12.29.06, 17:27

    If, whilst you sleep,
    I scratch my best kept secrets upon these lids,
    In writing reversed,
    Do you think they’d warm your heart on waking
    Or represent a curse ?

    Blatherskite | 12.30.06, 11:54

    you have beautiful eyes.

    [that’s ten pound you owe me now]

    andre | 12.31.06, 00:19

    My eyes will shortly be available for private engagements - book signings, dates, candlelit dinners, weddings, funerals, barmitzvahs, that sort of thing - at a very reasonable cost.

    Except to The Goldfish and Andre, of course, who get that honour for free.

    An Unreliable Witness | 12.31.06, 18:06

    All I see when I close my mind is horrible humiliations from when I was seven and occasionally, if I’m very lucky, scary jellyfish like blobs.

    Pandemian | 01.02.07, 17:22

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