Packed, wrapped and folded

Listen. I need to tell you this before I’m too wordless and powerless to go on, because I’m fading fast. Literally fading. Gone before dawn, I’m told. So. Listening? Are you? Don’t close your ears for even the blink of an eye.

You will no doubt have seen the cardboard box in the hallway. It was the largest one I could find. The box, I mean. Not the hallway. Why? Because I’m clearing out, that’s why.

This, if you like, is a pre-note. A letter before the final letter. I’ve written you fourteen pages of precise handwriting and sellotaped them all to the bathroom mirror. Be sure to read them in strict numerical order or else they’ll make even less sense than I don’t believe they make already. Or should that be that I do believe? I don’t know. Confused. It’s immaterial, as am I. Beyond the material. I no longer care about word orders and the correct placing of a semi-colon, and I bet you never thought you would see me spout such heresy between these two faint lines, feint ruled.

Do me a small favour, and don’t wash your face immediately after reading my penned ultimate thoughts. You splash so in your drenching frenzy to get yourself cleaning and gleaming that I know you’ll only make the ink run on the hanging sheets. Then. Then, well, I know you. Then you’ll wipe your tears with each page that I’ve sweated over and poured full of the bluest blood, and your face will look like a horror mask on a drip-stained October night. Better still, if you can’t staple and stifle your eyes, at least don’t admit to weeping real saltwater. Just pretend that a dust cloud has showered on your lashes.

Even as I held the pen in whitened knuckles like a primitive tool and pressed so hard into the paper that I was worried the nib would grind into the shine and sheen of the tabletop, even as I gripped the notepad under my flattened left hand to prevent it from sliding across the surface as if it had a mind of its own - I couldn’t help musing that it was like some dead animal’s paw still clinging to its prey - I kept my writing mathematically pure. Precise angles, all i’s dotted and t’s crossed. It’s true that I may still create with the best of them when I’m hiding in corners and rattling the few bonds I have left, wailing at the injustice of it all, but these days I often prefer my heartrending, gut-wrenching emotion served up with scalpel-like precision, stripped of all the sturm und drang and melodramatic excess. This isn’t a performance, though it might well be the curtain call. Did you ever see a more intimate monologue than the rising and falling of a chest, pressing against a tired ribcage for that final, overwhelming effort? I never did. I even missed this one in my haste to find the exit.

You always asked me what happened in the after. Afterwards. There’s your answer. Everything comes down to the essence, the plain and simple. One minute breathing in and breathing out; the next, just out.

I’ve got to go now. Got to go. Back to filling this cardboard box. In the hallway. The largest I could find. I’m throwing everything into it: heart and soul, liver and lungs, muscles and sinews, cartilage. Books and writings, tacky souvenirs, beautifully crafted ornaments. The clothes I always meant to donate to the homeless. Ripping it all from gaping wounds and unkempt shelves and clattering hangers. Taping it up. Sending it to an address I don’t have, a location to which I haven’t been given the secret password. I’ve no idea what the front door looks like or whether the letterbox rattles in the breeze. I am told that I shouldn’t be concerned about such details where I’m going. So I won’t be. I am stepping into a bigger picture, apparently: somewhere that is endless amidst sea and sky and last, lingering breaths.

To be brutally honest, I’m not sure that I won’t still need my heart and soul. But I’ll take a chance. I like surprises when I get to destinations. That’s what I calmly said to the coach driver as he careered his vehicle through the emergency gap in the crash barrier and straight into the paths of speeding vehicles. Head on for holidaymakers, businessmen, loving couples, family outings and pet terriers. I don’t think he heard me. He was shouting into the cavern that had opened up in the pit of his soul, hoping for a meaningful response but hearing only echo, while he beat his fists on the steering wheel until they bled into the collapsing windscreen.

Packed. Wrapped. Folded. Done. All it needs is sealing. I hope you can find the end of the parcel tape’s circular trail, because I’m not entirely certain that I still possess the fingers and thumbs for such a delicate task.