Unsent letter #7

Dear You,

First, a preamble. If you prefer, you may ignore this part and skip straight to the meat of the matter, since I know all too well how you quickly tire of my characteristic verbosity.

I am becoming a creature of habit, I see that now. I should stop writing to you, I see that now. Because my muddled communications always begin in the same way, I see that now. However, I am sick in soul, mind and body, and thus enjoy curling up in a corner and gnawing on my own flesh until nauseous. Why change the patterns of an unhurried lifetime, say I? So this unsent letter will weave its spell in much the same fashion as always. Please bear with me, then, as I let another abject apology slip through my fingers and out onto the page.

I am sorry for remaining unwritten for so long, just as I am sorry that you do not appear to have drawn so much as a single breath in an equally lengthy period of sunrises and sunsets. Sometimes, in idle moments that last for days on end, I sit here wondering if the rhythmic rising and falling of your chest has ceased entirely. Fear not, because I soon slap myself silly, sliding into sensibility, and dismiss that thought in an instant. No, it’s simply not possible.

I cling to the belief that, somewhere, you are sighing wearily at this latest missive. Or unsteadily drawing in rushes of air after an outpouring of tears. Or choking on fits of giggles as you shake your head, point and laugh at these neatly spaced lines, and wonder why I still bother. Or gasping as your body is shaken by physical sensations that neither of us would ever discuss for fear of our faces turning shades of not so secretive scarlet.

Maybe, however, there exists another explanation. Is your respiratory system now mechanically regulated, inhaled and exhaled and inhaled and exhaled again thanks to the quietly unassuming piston of medical intervention? I hope so. This, indeed, is my current assumption concerning your continued silence.

I don’t have much soul left for you, thanks to the way in which you have sucked it dry during our one-way correspondence, but I am hardwiring this pitiful remainder to the pristine technology and trusting in the powers of positive thinking. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. In. Out. Out. Out. Out. And breathe. And breathe?

I have a request. I am enclosing a simple brown paper bag, donated by a local grocer. I would be grateful if you could frame your response on its crinkled surface in your famously impenetrable scribble. No need for explanations concerning your ongoing absence. Just inform me how the weather is; tell me if the tree that always tapped its branches at your French window is now just so much burnt autumnal death or springing forth with summer life; whisper in my ear about whether you sleep all day, all night or both; worry me with carefully constructed untruths about never shooting bolt upright from nightmares; entertain me with brief descriptions of the tasteless meals you are fed through tubes. All I require are the simplest details of your day-to-day existence. Humour me.

When your words are written - or dictated, murmured, maybe even guessed at by those who watch over you and hold your pale hands in their patient clutches - please fill the paper bag with three slow movements of your lungs, and send it to me post-haste, before the evidence disappears into even more thin air than you can currently manage in your weakened state. In return, I promise to refrain from piercing its outer skin and trying to ascertain whether or not you still exist.

Yours forever,
An Unreliable Witness

Comments: 10

    there are always questions, and there are always answers. even if the answers take a little longer to find. place these words in the sea…

    Miles Away | 11.18.07, 15:50

    Verbosity, abject apologies, impenetrable scribble and ludicrous requests…?

    Now that’s more alike it.

    *Gnaws on the eyelids with gusto*

    Ani | 11.18.07, 17:42

    please mr witness, please send me one of your unsent letters (is that a contradiction?)

    if i read your words written on paper, would i see into your soul?

    mizyake | 11.19.07, 10:52

    The weather is foul, but the long-range forecast sunny.

    lillipilli | 11.19.07, 13:46

    Now, that just made me sad. Quickly, respond to this comment with something amusing, or at least pithy.

    bohémienne | 11.19.07, 15:32

    Miles Away - I keep a regular supply of empty bottles for such word-travelling adventures into the wide blue yonder.

    Ani - Yes, it’s just like old times. No more of that painfully obvious real-time blogging lark. Obfuscation and drawn-out metaphors are back. Hurrah.

    Clarissa - Thank you.

    Mizyake - I’m not sure whether you would see into my soul. I think it might be impenetrable, even in written form.

    Lillipilli - Strangely enough, that is meteorologically accurate. Uncannily so.

    Bohémienne - Um. Er. Amusement! Pith! Ahem. Oh dear. Sorry.

    An Unreliable Witness | 11.19.07, 19:57

    I don’t think you should ever stop composing unsent letters to you. One day you might respond.

    Stephanie Boon | 11.19.07, 20:01

    That almost caused me, to send you, an unsent response.

    But I am sleeping. Deeply. Apart from this bit here. Which isn’t.

    Friends lost along lifes mire-ways.

    NAGA | 11.20.07, 00:26

    oh god; deeply moving sounds a bit lame, doesn’t it? years ago, someone i loved (in a doomed sort of way) sent me a card. He asked if i had found a something-else in the envelope. i hadn’t. i’ve been trying to inhale the breath he must have put in there ever since. he later dispensed with the need for breath and i am still gutted. that i let something precious go. unbreathed.

    anyhow, something about despair is universal, eh?

    as Clarissa said .. haunting …

    Shell | 11.25.07, 14:05

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