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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