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