Unsent letter #8

Dear You,

Give or take a day or two, and more or less half a memory away, it struck me this afternoon, like a forceful blow to the back of the neck from a malevolent spirit, that it has been a full year since this still regrettably one-sided correspondence began.

Such thoughts frequently occur to me when I am paying homage to your instruments of mental cruelty. Indeed, on this occasion I was chewing on the pencil you once used to write the only letter I ever received in your embarrassed and apologetic script, barely there except when held up to the halogen light and examined like a faded will and testament. Such devotion has taken me almost through to the implement’s soft lead. My tongue is now riddled with splintered wood, and near-fatal poisoning will surely follow. I hope such gruesome details worry you unduly, so that your eternity will be wracked with guilt for not dropping everything, including your motionless pretence, and rushing to my bedside.

Since you are suspended forever in aspic, eyes wide and startled to the point of splitting, yet skilfully avoiding everyone’s gaze, I am entirely unsure as to what stage of the yearly cycle of life you are currently experiencing. I, however, am enduring the joy and goodwill of Christmas. As befits the festive season, I considered it only polite to send you this round robin to keep you informed of the various dubious activities that have continued in your honour.

Everyone you ever knew courtesy of my exaggerated monologues still exists. I would like to tell you that you are sorely missed, but you’re not. They have admitted that they find it difficult to dwell upon your fading into nothing when you were only ever a nebulous presence at the best of times, and at the worst of times simply a frayed breathing, taking each of your terrified inhalations from far under a narrow unmade bed. I bring up your name in polite conversation, but the standard response of the dutiful listener is to shift uneasily from heel to heel, examine the bottom of their teacup and claim that you were a figment of my unfettered imagination. I find it increasingly difficult to argue.

Your family await any hesitant updates from abroad or afar, still unable to accept that they should be rifling through their cupboards for the crumbs of comfort they so desire. The last time I spoke to them, they informed me through distant, hollow monotones that they leave a hopeful cursor blinking at the corner of their screen, in full expectation that you will resume communicating with them from a safe distance. I did as I know you would wish, and told them to expect a message any day now, delivered in your characteristic minuscule grey Arial, just as lowercase and unassuming as they fondly remember.

Your neighbours remain curiously silent through the flimsy cardboard partitions, but have been kind enough to retrieve your key from under the dirty beige stair carpet as often as they feel able, enter your simple white tomb and dust your possessions for tell-tale fingerprints. Needless to say, the only signs of disturbance were mine - the remnants of drunken nights when I broke in to paint brutal messages across your protective walls. They have also watered your plants, even though each of the exotic varieties died many months ago. Thus, everything is entirely as you left it, but wreathed in cobwebs and carpeted with dry leaves.

As for my own news, there is so much I could tell that I don’t wish to share it. I trust, instead, that my silence will allow you to sleep on, blissfully unaware of anything except the rhythm of your own internal metronome, seventy-two beats a minute.

Yours forever,
An Unreliable Witness

Comments: 12

    Beautifully painful, heartache and whimsy.

    And here I am about to write a post about mincemeat.

    You shame Sir.

    Gordon | 12.12.07, 23:43

    poetry

    andre | 12.13.07, 08:55

    Ah yes. I remember well those nights of drunken wall scrawling.

    Bohémienne | 12.13.07, 12:27

    Who is this ‘you’? And where is she? She’s a she in my mind. Don’t argue! What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she wake up?! Why can’t you send her the letters!!! Why doesn’t she write back?!?! WRITE BACK, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!!!!!!!!!!!

    [I sincerely apologise. Your words - these unanswered missives - they’re haunting.]

    Ani | 12.14.07, 11:38

    If it made Ani crack, it must be a good piece.

    2ndhandsoul | 12.14.07, 18:29

    I do have a sincere, out-of-the-blue question, Witness: do you write your work on paper prior to posting it, or do you sit down and type without the need for the middleman?

    2ndhandsoul | 12.14.07, 18:31

    The Lemon Sherbet of a lost love.

    NAGA | 12.14.07, 23:59

    Gordon - There’s nothing wrong with mincemeat. Unless you’re diabetic, of course.

    Andre - [insert rhyming response here]

    Bohémienne - I have lost my spray paint.

    Ani - Calm down, calm down. You’ll be asking what happened to that bleedin’ moth next.

    2ndhandsoul - Interesting question, thanks for asking. I have this kind of dream where I sit down and write the words of my posts and short stories in free-flowing long-hand, on paper, like I used to do when I was child. Sadly, my writing hand cannot keep pace with my hand. Only my fast, pounding typing can do that, so my words are generally written into a selection of curiously-named Notepad / TextEdit documents. It’s not quite the same, not quite as romantic as an ideal. But needs must.

    NAGA - Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’m looking for a packet of choc chip cookies instead.

    An Unreliable Witness | 12.15.07, 15:08

    I feel sorry to say this, but these days the ‘lead’ in your pencil is actually graphite…

    This feels like the sort of rotten comment ‘you’ might actually send if she (yes I agree!) were to bother to send a reply sometime; if indeed you were to send the unsent letter in the first place!

    Beautiful writing, thank you for sharing.

    Stephanie Boon | 12.16.07, 17:29

    suspended forever in aspic”

    The commenter secretly notes these particular words down in his notebook to use himself one day and thus tacitly pass off as his own.

    Ben | 12.17.07, 20:07

    Stephanie - 2B honest, I think you’re right about the pencils. Oh well. [And yes, that was a dreadful pun.] Thanks for your comment.

    Ben - As noted before, any of my phrases are yours to use however you wish, just as long as this arrangement is reciprocal [he says, eyeing your site with interest and no small amount of jealousy].

    An Unreliable Witness | 12.18.07, 22:42

    oh my … stunning … tortured … plus what Ani said …

    shell | 12.25.07, 15:11

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